


Reciprocity

by CyborgShepard



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Office, Drunken Shenanigans, F/F, Jealousy, Light BDSM, Mistaken Identity, Phone Sex, Praise Kink, Service Kink, Sexline Operator!Moira, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-10-05
Updated: 2019-01-21
Packaged: 2019-07-23 06:12:31
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 33,221
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16153253
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CyborgShepard/pseuds/CyborgShepard
Summary: “And which one of our services would you like to use tonight?”This time when Angela asked, she didn’t falter. She wasn’t embarrassed. Maybe it was the no-bullshit way the operator regarded her. It was probably just due to the wine. “I was wondering if the Irish woman in Dominance/submission was free, actually.”





	1. A First

**Author's Note:**

> I take your mistaken/secret identity au and raise you this hot mess. 
> 
> Enjoy. Or try to.

“ _Th_ _ank you for calling Talon, a service created by and for the queer community where we take pride in bringing your fantasies to life, genuinely and authentically. Please have your credit card information available. Once registration is complete you will be matched with one of our professional agents specialising in dominance/submission, fetish play, bondage..."_

Angela bit her lip as she listened to the tape play through, tapping the plastic edge of her credit card against her desk. The little blue numbers on her clock glared at her, telling her that it was already incriminatingly late and not the best idea to be sitting here, phone to ear and thighs pressed together tightly, and that she could _still turn back_. With faraway eyes she stared at her laptop screen, her mind on a million different matters that took much higher precedence than _this,_ but still despite all her rationalism she couldn’t bring herself to pull her mobile from her ear and press the little red _end_ button and tear the sleek black card resting by her wrist to pieces.

On the bottom of her open laptop screen a little red marker sat in the top corner of her email inbox. She sighed and leaned back in her chair.

And before she could completely talk herself out of the entire ordeal the line clicked over, and a lady with a husky Latin accent was on the other side of the phone.

“Thank you for holding,” she said, and that alone somehow managed to make Angela blush. That or it was a combination of the wine glass beside her wrist, which only had a sip left in it, and the reality of what she was doing sinking in. “Please be aware that once your details are entered and your call is redirected you will be charged by the minute. There is a minimum of ten minutes per call. There is no maximum. Do you understand?”

Angela licked her lips. “Yes.”  

“Perfect. By law I have to confirm that you are over 21 in order for you to use our services, so if you could state your age…”

“I’m thirty-two,” Angela said, feeling a little bit sheepish, but the woman made no comment. She didn’t snicker or scoff. And of course she wouldn’t: this was her job, and she no doubt listened to hundreds of women nervously admitting to themselves they were calling a sex line when they were of prime age for humble matrimony and blooming families.

There was a smile audible in her voice, but still Angela couldn’t get past knowing that it was only because of her training, merely a facade. Still she proffered her credit card information when prompted, and listened to the lady confirm that everything was in order.

“And do you have a preference to which service you would like to use tonight? I can repeat them if you’d like. Here at Talon our agents specialise in role-play and scenes involving fetish play, dominance/submission--”

“Um,” Angela cleared her throat, and fidgeted with her sleeves where they were rolled, and felt too tight, “submission. I mean, I am, uh--”

The woman laughed, but it was light and friendly, and Angela’s neck didn’t bristle like it might have in another time, a different situation. “Dominance/submission, easy. And did you have a preference to gender?”

At least that was an easy question. “Female.”

“I have the _perfect_ line for you,” the lady insisted, and Angela could hear fingers working over a keyboard. Then the operator said, and it felt all too abrupt, “One moment please.”

There was a click. Angela didn’t realise she was holding her breath til she heard the woman, a new woman, clear her throat softly.

“Thank you for joining me tonight,” she greeted, her accent thick, her lilt thicker. Angela exhaled and shivered in tandem, and her fingers drummed for something to tinker with, her debit card glaring damningly at her from where it was dropped on her keyboard. “What would you like me to call you for our time together?”

Worrying about her anonymity was pointless. They already had her credit card details. But all the same, Angela wet her lips and said, “Mercy.”

“Mercy. _Mercy_.” It came out of her mouth like honey and Angela shivered. “A little too early to be asking for that, don’t you think?”

Irish. She was Irish. Wasn’t that ironic. Angela licked her lips, and resisted the urge to take that last healthy drop of wine to keep her itchiness inside her and from straying to her voice.  
  
“I don’t know,” she managed, unaided, “maybe that’s just how effective your introduction is.”

Angela shut her eyes and silently swore. Hopefully that didn’t sound as cringe-worthy as it did in her mind.

But there was a smile on the other side of the line, when the woman spoke. “Well, I thank you for the feedback, Mercy. Is this your first time calling in?”

Shit, was it that obvious? Angela felt something in her deflate, but still she admitted, albeit with a little less confidence, “Yes, and I’ve never- that is to say, and no offence, but I don’t normally do this sort of thing.”

“None taken,” the woman said lightly, amused. “What prompted the spontaneity?”

Angela’s eye caught that little red notification above her emails. She looked at the sleek, matte black business card beside her wine. “I wanted to feel nice.”   

The woman hummed, though it wasn’t shallow with false intrigue. It was low, genuine, and made Angela think of leather chairs and thin cigarettes and heavy gazes. “I want to make you feel good, too, Mercy,” she said, and she sounded genuine, “if you’ll let me.” 

“What can I call you?” 

“Whatever you’d like to call me.” 

“Sir,” she blurted without thinking, and then afterwards, tacked on, “if that’s alright.”

“Sir,” the woman said, sounding pleased. “I like it. I’m flagging you as submissive, am I right in doing so?”

“Yes, Sir.”

“And you’d like our scene to involve me dominating you?”

Angela shivered. It probably wasn’t meant to turn Angela on as much as it did, but in such a delicious accent Angela guessed the operator could recite the damn phone book and it would still sound like sex.

“Yes, Sir.”

“And are you in a comfortable place, Mercy? Are you sitting up or laying down?” 

“I’m at my desk, in my office, at home.” 

“Pardon me?” It was clipped, short. Not like the inviting and easy voice Angela had been responding before. Angela blinked dumbly. Til she remembered. 

“Forgive me,” she said softly, and she shut her eyes from her laptop screen and the clock telling her it was too late for this sort of behaviour. She shut her eyes, and from there it was easy to forget herself. “I’m sitting down, sir.”

“Lovely. I get the impression you’re studiously attentive, or perhaps you’ve been trained before?” 

Maybe it was because of the wine. Maybe it was because of work. Maybe it was a great many things, but Angela let her lips part a little, and her quick fingers open the first few buttons that her shirt would allow before her breasts were exposed. When she opened her thighs slightly her garter belt pressed into her skin, where it was clipped to her stockings. “I haven’t had a Domme before. But I’d like to, Sir.”

“And if I were your Domme, what would you like me to do?” 

Angela paused. And when her thoughts stalled and she choked, imagined she wasn’t alone in the office, imagined it wasn’t even her office to begin with, but one with long floor to ceiling windows and a broad desk. There was a figure standing in the corner, clean cut in dress shoes and a button down, a different one for every day of the week. Angela shifted. It was easy to see herself on her knees by the chair, head bowed and her hands flat on her thighs.

It was even easier to put a voice to the figure. 

“I’d like you to watch me, if it pleases, Sir,” Angela said. “And tell me what you’d like to see me do.”

“Anything I ask?”

“Of course, Sir.”

“I don’t know about you, Mercy, but I like things slow. I think a reward is only worth something once it’s earned. Otherwise it’s spoiled.”

“And you don’t want me spoiled, Sir?”

There was a smirk on the other side of the line. Angela wasn’t sure it was truly meant to be there. Perhaps going into this she had a juvenile preconception that the person on the phone would be some spritely twenty-something breathing in her ear and calling her a slut and waiting for the minutes to fill, waiting for the next client to click on the line. But now Angela felt sheepish, because there was no way this could be a script. Angela shivered, and it was as though everything about this call had been catered to her; even down to the accent. 

Her legs fell a little more open.

Her breathing came a little more harsh.

“Unless it’s by my hand,” Sir said, and there definitely was a smirk in her voice.

“So what would you have me do?”

She was pushing, but not so the call would end quicker, not so she would get off faster. Sir gave a quiet noise of disapproval on her end, and Angela could see it now, the slight drop of a brow over thin framed spectacles. But there were no other signs of displeasure, aside from a tightness to her voice. Hearing it made Angela feel like she’d failed and won all at once.

“Pardon the cliche, but what are you wearing?”

“I’m still in my clothes from work, Sir. I’m wearing my pencil skirt and my blouse, and my stockings.” 

“You sound like a treat,” Sir said, and the intone in her voice gave Angela the impression that she meant it. “Unbutton your shirt would, pet? And hike your skirt up.”

Angela did. She had to shimmy against the harsh polyester of the chair, but she tugged her black skirt up to her hips, her stockings still in place, her thighs spread even wider than they were before.

And she was wet. And perhaps it was all only due to the circumstances, rather than the voice on the line, or the flirting, or the hour. Maybe it was the context of how what was happening happened. She was calling a _sex hotline,_ after all. But she was already soaked through her panties, and Sir knew. She made a noise -- savouring, almost, as if she could see her spread but that was only part of the illusion she was spinning -- and Angela could imagine the lingering stare, could feel the heat of it.

“I want you to run your hand over your thigh,” Sir said, and Angela did, “and up over your belly, to your chest.”

“I’m still wearing my bra, Sir. It’s lavender.”

“Leave it on, but edge your breasts out just enough, so that you can touch your nipples.”

Angela did. And when the pad of her thumb caught the soft, ruddy red of her peak, she shuddered, and Sir heard.

“Did I say you could do that?”

Somehow, with just those seven little words, Angela’s spine felt like ice chased down it, and the shame burned on her cheeks, even if no one was there to see it. She sounded so strict. So devastatingly firm, without even raising her voice. She sounded just like--

“I’m sorry, Sir, I got ahead of myself.”

“I forgive you, pet. It isn’t your fault. If I were there with you, I’d show you just how to touch yourself the right way.”

“Tell me, then, please,” Angela begged, and some sick sense of desperation crawled out of her chest and twisted her voice to sound childlike, to sound pitiful. It left a hole in its wake. Angela needed to fill it. Needed to feel complete. To have value.

“If I were there with you,” Sir began, her accent so heavy Angela nearly almost missed her words, “I’d make you watch as I cupped your breasts and parsed my fingers over every inch of skin save for the area you’d want me to touch. And when I’d exhausted you there I’d use my mouth, and trace my hands to your belly, and I’d dip into those stockings, but not enough. Never enough.”

Angela didn’t bother correcting her, she ran along with it eyes shut and right hand slipping down to the band on her panties. She was sure the phone picked up the soft, quiet noises she was making, and a secret part of it was glad for it, and hoped that it might have been affecting Sir the way Sir was affecting Angela.

Doubtful, seeing as though this was her job and she no doubt performed every night. But there had to be an interest there, in women or domination or even just sex, under everything.

Angela moaned quietly, and if it was for show then that was for her to know.

“I’m imagining you in my office chair,” Sir said, “flayed and desperate. Am I wrong?” 

“No, Sir, you aren’t wrong.”

“Are you wet, angel?”

Oh, God. How could she know how _that_ word affected her? It didn’t matter, not really: any term of endearment somehow did it for Angela. Sir probably figured that pretty early on. “Yes,” she gasped, “I’m wet for you, Sir." 

“Do you want me to taste?”

“Please, Sir.”

“And do you want me inside of you?” 

“Oh, um.” Suddenly, she felt decidedly unsexy. “I actually don’t like penetration. Sorry, this is silly, it’s just make believe--”

“Not at all,” Sir was quick to say, sounding unphased and amenable. “I want to give you a fantasy you’ll enjoy. And if I can be candid, I don’t much fancy penetration either.”

“Oh,” Angela managed quietly, and she bit her lip as she smiled goofily to herself. Such a little, unimportant thing. But sharing her secret calmed Angela from her worries of being scorned; even if Sir was only telling a white lie. “I’d like it if you used your fingers on my clit, Sir.”

“Will you beg?”

“If that’s what Sir wants.”

The voice on the line chuckled. “Such a good little thing you are, Mercy. Are you this obedient in your daily life?”

“I could be more. Obedient, that is. The problem is I have no one to take care of me and keep me in line, Sir.”

“Well, I dare say you’d be a treat to care for,” Sir drawled, giving way for Angela to imagine a shadowy figure sitting back in their own scratchy office chair, biting a thumb, eyes hot and gaze heavy. “What I would give to have you in my lap now, or perhaps by my ankle, knelt on the floor.”

“What would I have to do to for the former, Sir?”

A beat. “Thank me when you come.”

“Can I come, Sir?”

“Do you think you’re ready to?”

Angela wanted to sob. She’d wanted to come ever since she got home, and all the adrenaline and all the tension shook out of her and left her empty. “Please, Sir, please make me come.” 

“Touch your clit the way you like best,” Sir husked. “And I’m going to count. And let’s train you up a little, and see how long you can make it, shall we?”

Perhaps Sir wasn’t reading a phonebook in her accent, but this was the next best thing, and as she called each number it felt like a bullet to her chest, and Angela could feel herself crescendoing. 

Her fingers worked in tight little circles, over and over and over, and she could feel herself start to cramp.

Where her thighs were spread they shook, her muscles fluttering, her nerves twitching. 

Her moans weren’t put on now. She’d never been so loud before.

“Thank you, Sir,” she was gasping, her knuckles white where she gripped the phone, “thank you for letting me come, Sir, thank you for making me come, thank you--”

She didn’t even make it to sixteen.

As she could feel herself climb and climb and start to fall she could hear heavy breathing on the other side of the line. Just a vocal effect, she thought, just to heighten the experience, like the presentation of a dish in a restaurant. She felt the beginnings of the all too familiar drop. And hearing the tight, irregular breathing on the other side of the line was what finally pushed her somewhere deep and impossible to return from.

“Oh my God,” she gasped afterwards, chest heaving, a weak smile on her face and her right arm over the side of the chair. “Woah.”

Sir laughed quietly. For some reason she sounded sheepish. “It’s good, isn’t it?”

“I think the movies have got phone sex all wrong. I think they need an update.” 

“Well, somebody has to be the one to tell them.” 

“No way,” Angela said, much too hot in her small office, the loose curls from her ponytail sticking to her forehead. “Talon is my little secret.”

“Careful, secrets always come to light." 

“Will this be ours?”

“I'd like that.”

“Good. Just for us.”

Sir laughed. She didn’t sound fake. She didn’t sound like she was talking from a script. But maybe that was just the afterglow.

“As much as I’ve enjoyed accompanying you this evening,” she said after a quiet pause, “I feel compelled to let you know you’ve been on the line for half an hour.”

She was being booted off. Angela didn’t frown, and she wasn’t disappointed. She was an adult. They both were. “You probably have calls banked up.”

“Not on a Thursday, at this hour,” Sir said, sounding as though she were stretching. Angela could see long arms, thin, sturdy shoulders. Slender fingers in tight fists. “But I just thought I should give you a courtesy warning, since you did give me some wonderful noises I’ll be hearing for a long time to come.”

“Seriously?” whispered Angela, bunching herself up. “I was that good?”

“Better than me,” the voice on the line -- not Sir, she was gone -- lilted.

“Do you ever, you know, when you’re on a really good call--?” It was out of line. Probably. But this was anonymous, and past two in the morning, and someone had just listened to her orgasm through a headset. A little pillow talk wouldn’t hurt.

“I mean,” the operator said casually, and her heavy accent dropped imperceptibly. Angela didn’t notice. “Some of the other agents do. I _personally_ don’t, but that’s simply due to who I am as a person.”

“Are you stone?”

Angela received a quiet huff for her inquisitiveness. “You could say that, yes.”

“Are you butch?”

“That depends on who you ask.” 

Angela shook her head. “Sorry, I’m getting too enthusiastic.”

“I like your enthusiasm.”

Angela smiled to herself. Preoccupied as she was she hadn’t noticed her laptop had gone to standby. She closed the lid, and stood up to stretch. “Thank you for this evening,” she said, not entirely sure how to end these things. Surely some people simply hung up once they were done. But that didn’t feel right, not on this call service, anyhow.

“Thank you for keeping me company tonight, Mercy,” Sir said, and she left a brief interim of silence that Angela felt was meaningful, before she launched into her ending phrase. “At Talon we strive to provide an impeccable service, and any feedback you’d like to give can be sent through our website.”

The line clicked off. And Angela was standing in her office, which was empty and alone and too small. She squinted at the clock. And still feeling fuzzy, she downed the dregs of her wine, and she thought about the emails looming in her inbox some more while she went to have a shower.


	2. An Arrangement

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Stoked at how much you guys like this! Updates should be pretty regular. Thank you so much for the support!

"Don’t you look absolutely radiant,” flatlined Genji, and Angela deliberated on whether she should flip him off and press on or turn on her heel and call in a sick day, before she realised that either of those options would prove to be corrosive to her already fragile situation. “You didn’t call, did you?”

“Good morning to you, too,” she said dryly instead, plunking her handbag on the table in the lunch room so she could rifle though it quicker, and procure her little boxy tub of yogurt easier. She slid it into the communal fridge, and swiped her paper cup of coffee from the counter before it could be pilfered by her coworker.

“You know,” said Genji, weight on his hip and disapproving slant to his mouth, “keep-cups are the way of the future. I’m gonna buy you one, so you can stop killing turtles.”

Angela squinted at her cup, holding it at arm’s length, and raised her eyebrow. “It says it’s biodegradable.”

“It’s also landfill.”

“Alright,” Angela sighed, and it was then she realised that she was already wholly and irreversibly _done_ with the day. She gave him a thumbs up as she turned, and headed for her cubicle.

She was early, as usual, and had assumed she might be the first person on the floor, being a Friday, and being before eight in the morning. The fact that Genji didn’t come out of the break room to immediately hassle her was relieving, and Angela threw her coat over the back of her chair and kicked her handbag beneath her desk as she sat down. But she couldn’t help but sigh when she opened her laptop and caught her reflection in the black screen.

Her hair was limp, but she disguised it by pinning it neatly up at the base of her neck and letting wisps curl in front of her ears in attempt to look artsy. It only left her looking like she had bedhead. Autumn was encroaching, and so she got away with a thin turtleneck and skirt, and she could blame her sullen skin on the cloudy skies. But the tiredness was etched into her forehead and around her eyes, apparent and year-round. With a sigh, Angela tapped the laptop's trackpad, and watched her reflection fade into her login screen.

Glaring and bright was the little red email alert. Though now, in the five hours since she’d last seen it, it had almost doubled, her anxiety with it.

The problem wasn’t going to go away on it's own now, no matter how hard she ignored it, no matter how she procrastinated. With resigned sigh and a heavy finger, Angela clicked.  
  
**amariana@ovwmed.sales.com >> 16:27** **  
** **Subject: WP-F Stem Cell  
**   
**vaswani_satya@vishkar.corp.co >> 16:30** **  
** **Subject: Expression of Interest RE: Stem Cell**

**odeorainm_1@watchpoint.co >> 21:16** **  
** **Subject: Watchpoint Futuristics to OVW Med** **  
** **  
** **odeorainm_1@watchpoint.co >> 04:45** **  
** **Subject: (Re) Watchpoint Futuristics to OVW Med**

 **tracemaker27@gmail.com >> 06:52  
** **Subject: (empty) Hey so did you call? Genji tol...** **  
**

Without much of a second thought Angela deleted that one, barely even blinking, already braced for eight-oh-three when Lena would bound onto the floor and come to pester her in person.

Angela cleared her throat, and looked around, but she was encased by empty cubicles, and the blinds hadn’t yet been opened in the head office. That didn’t mean it wasn’t occupied: just that human beings weren’t allowed conference yet. That was fine by her. It gave her more time to conjure a response to all the emails banking up, one on top of the other. Perhaps last night had been a mistake, but only because she wasted ample time ignoring what she should have been working on, which was untangling this fuck up. It wasn’t even her fault, Angela thought bitterly, shooting a scowl over to the frosted-glass windows of the head office. She noted the timestamps on  the newer emails. That made her mood sour even more.

Ana Amari was easy to deal with, an amicable soul and mentor to her during her university days. They got along, but that didn’t mean Amari’s patience was an endless tether; unless she was dealing with Angela. With a grim smile Angela forced out a reply, an apology, a plead. Conference, next week? she wrote, and hoped that O’Deorain would simply go along with it rather than counter it, and she signed it off with warm regards, Angela. Her nails were whittled-down and fraying things, and so when she brought her thumb to her teeth as she pressed send Angela came up with nothing to tear at nervously and simply waited for the little blue bar atop the screen to finish sliding.

Done.

And then was Vishkar, whom Angela abhorred and paid for it too many times in the past with her hot tongue. She typed what she thought was a reasonable response. She deleted it. She sipped at her latte, and thought about dead turtles, and about how humans had turned the world inside-out for its own gain, and suddenly brimming with bitterness and a new wave of disgust with Vishkar, somehow managed to come up with something that walked the line of professionalism, without slipping off into vehement disrespect.

Deepest apologies, she said, but our research team have not finalised their findings, and thus we are not ready to sell.

Regards, A. Ziegler.   
  
Send.

It wasn’t a lie, though still not a whole truth. Ambiguous enough that should it be recorded and dredged for court cases in one hundred years’ time it wouldn’t paint Watchpoint in a bad light, but Angela hoped that it was blunt enough for Vaswani to get the hint and spare her inbox, just for a day.

And on the subject of multiple emails…

Angela’s mouth went tacky, but not for any good reason. Not for any reason she’d want to admit aloud, anyway. Still she clicked the email above the last, and skimmed it briefly, as though only glancing at it wouldn’t have the same effect on her as reading it fully would.

Something in her chest still twitched stupidly, though, and she ignored it by hammering out a reply, and then poking her head up to glare over at the office.

No movement. Nothing. Not yet.

She clicked send.

And it was as she was perusing her schedule for the day, and plotting out her next week that the elevator at the front and to the right of the floor sounded and Angela, on instinct, looked up, and wished she hadn’t.

“Oi!” shouted Lena from across the office floor, brows knitted together and a coffee cup almost bigger than her entire form clutched in her fierce grip. “Why are you ignoring me?”

She wasn’t across the room for long. Her strides were short but they were quick, and Angela shielded her eyes as she looked down at her laptop and endeavoured to keep at her work.

Well, she endeavoured to.

“You said you’d call,” Lena pouted, and she pulled her roller chair across the aisle all the better to sit and pester.

Her coffee made an absurd noise through the lid when she sipped it. Angela cringed. “I made no such promise."  
  
"It's actually a really good group, not one of those dirty, tacky services you see ads on the telly for at two in the morning."

"I don't doubt it, Lena."

“People do this all the time, now days, Ange, and it’s nothing to be embarrassed of. I mean, relationships are time heavy, and even going out to the clubs can be an ordeal, just to try to find someone to--”

“Lena,” Angela hissed, and she ducked, though no one else was around to hear them. “I appreciate what you and Genji are trying to do, I really do, but I’m much too busy to spend my time calling a _sexline._ ”

Lena looked frustrated, but not because of her. “I know. We all know you’re busy, and we know why.”

Ah, back to this. Angela shook her head and pulled her schedule up again, though seeing it seemed to only exemplify Lena’s point.

“It isn’t fair,” she continued, “that you get landed with all her mistakes and all the work she can’t be bothered doing--”

“Lena,” Angela said again, though much more severe, “That's enough. O'Deorain's got a lot on her plate at the moment. It's to be expected that some of it will fall to me."

This wasn’t the first time it’d come up in discussion, and Angela was sure it wouldn’t the last, but it was her problem to deal with and she couldn’t see it resolving in any clean, amicable way. Sometimes the workload was vexing, for sure, but secretly Angela knew that she was the only one who could handle it all.

Secretly, Angela rather liked that O’Deorain knew that, too.

“All I’m saying is you need a vice, a hobby, anything. You need balance.”

“I have balance; I like my reds and whites in equal amounts.”

Lena snorted, and grinned though she didn’t want to. Angela watched her privately for a moment; she was young, and pretty, and full of potential. Angela tried not to be jealous -- it was unbecoming. “Just call, would you? You might like it.”

“Whom are we calling?”

And like someone had thrown her into the deepest, blackest, coldest lake, Lena’s mood dampened instantly. She shot Angela one last longing look before she scooted back to her cubicle, holding her coffee so tight Angela entertained the idea of it popping open and spilling everywhere. Though not for long; Angela would probably have to fix that mess, too.

So instead she cleared her throat, and folded her hands together on the desk. “I’m calling in a favour with Amari from Overwatch Medical. I'm hoping she’ll meet next week, I’m waiting on her reply.”

“Yes,” O’Deorain began, clipped and tired, and even though she was standing in the aisle, her body shielded by the cubical, she still seemed impossibly tall. “You said as much in your email.”

Angela kept her face impassive, and smiled tightly up at O’Deorain. “We should finalise things and come to a decision before this all gets further out of hand, and other organisations stick their nose in the matter.”

O’Deorain glanced around, though the only person on the floor was Lena, and while Angela could spy Genji not-so-secretly watching through the venetians over the lunchroom window she didn’t say anything. Still, O’Deorain cocked her head to her office, and waited for Angela to close her laptop and brush her skirt down when she stood before leading her there.

The blinds were open now, and outside the long floor-to-ceiling windows the world was grey and bitter. Angela didn’t mind the weather. It reminded her of Europe. And it made O’Deorain’s office cosy if anything. Her mahogany desk divided the room and Angela leant against it with her arms folded as she watched O’Deorain shut the door behind her and run a hand through her short red hair. The skin beneath her mismatched eyes was dark. Angela glanced at the futon couch pressed to the wall next to her, and she knew it was more than simply decor.

“Do you want to go forward with Overwatch?” O’Deorain went straight to the point, and she circled her desk and Angela to click into her own laptop. She pulled up an article and spun the screen to Angela. “Are you sure?”

Angela didn’t need to read the headline. She recognised the picture without even needing to scrutinise it. The eastern side of a skyline tower, blown out and billowing smoke.   
It was two days old, but it still weighed on Angela’s stress just as heavy as when she’d first seen it. 

“I think this is what they need to stitch themselves back together,” Angela said grimly. “Look at their record, their humanitarian aid, their ties to the United Nations. Vishkar doesn’t even have a seat at that table. That’s all I’m saying.”

“Vishkar are offering to pay more.”

“When have we at Watchpoint been swayed by money in the past?”

“Spearheading a medical science breakthrough isn’t cheap. And Vishkar don’t seem to have a history of attacking their own organisation from the inside out,” O’Deorain commented dryly. Her accent slipped out a little, as it did sometimes despite how Americanised it was now after all her time abroad, and Angela felt a niggle of familiarity. But she ignored it, focusing instead on how O’Deorain was watching her. O'Deorain may have been her superior, but she respected Angela's opinion. She could be swayed into siding with Angela's decisions, most of the time. So Angela licked her lips. And if she put her weight on one hip, tilted her head to the side just _slightly,_ and caught her bottom lip in her teeth, well, those were innocent little mannerisms, weren’t they?

“To put it simply, sir, I don’t trust Vishkar.”

O’Deorain was still bent over her laptop, and she looked away from Angela then, a strange expression on her face. That wasn’t unusual. Half the time Angela never knew what she was thinking, even if Angela was the one human being she was closest to.

“You can’t micromanage the world to fit your ideals, Angela,” O’Deorain eventually decided on. “Sometimes you have to make ties that will benefit yourself, that will aid your work. It’s no use opening doors that lead to dead ends. Or, you know.” She tapped the photo with a thin finger, the nail neatly rounded. “The atmosphere.”

“I just think our research needs to go into safe hands, sir.”

“And you think Amari has safe hands?”

“Don’t you?”

“You went to university with her,” O’Deorain said delicately, and when she stood upright she seemed much too tall for the room, and she busied herself by folding the sleeves on her button down to her elbow. “I’m sure you have a better understanding of her than I do.”

Surely O’Deorain didn’t mean it the way Angela took it. She couldn’t know. She didn’t know, Angela told herself, but their eyes caught as O’Deorain combed her fingers back through her hair and slid her wire-frame glasses over her long nose. “I’m not saying that we can’t go with Overwatch Medical, Angela,” she said to balm the blow, misinterpreting her expression as sullen rather than embarrassed and the way Angela stayed silent, which came from how O’Deorain always pulled the rug out from beneath her whenever Angela thought she’d found her footing with the woman.

She cleared her throat and shook herself, and Amari’s cat-like eyes were gone from her memories, and she met O'Deorain's curious gaze evenly. “Why do we need to sell at all? Why don’t we just wait it out, and see which organisation tears itself apart first.”

“You sound upset,” O’Deorain said softly, as she rounded the table, and perhaps she stood closer to Angela than she would any of her peers, but that was what she got. That was her reward. She wasn’t like the others. She was special.

Angela looked up at her from under her lashes. She folded her hands in front of her.

It was ironic, really. Lena thought she needed a vice. She already had one. All she needed was someone to balance it for her.

“I’m not upset, sir. You’re right; Overwatch is falling out from under its own feet, but I still don’t think Vishkar is our option. I’m worried our hyper-cell regenerative technology is simply too powerful for this world to handle. I don’t want the company at the centre of an arm’s race.”

“Rumours are already spreading like cancer. The sooner we sell the sooner they’re abated, and our name won’t be dragged through the mud.” O'Deorain's face was always so harsh, always hard lines beneath a frown. But this close to Angela she was soft, albeit stern. Angela could see the soft hair in front of her ears, could see the freckles that lingered high up on her cheekbones. If Angela let her gaze slip down she could see where O'Deorain hadn't done her top button, where her collarbones were sharp and smelt like the cologne she always wore. In her presence like this Angela vibrated. It was like something had been switched in her, a survival instinct, but what Angela was in danger of she didn't know.

“If we sell to the wrong company, we won’t have a name at all.”

O’Deorain looked at her, her eyes heavy and strange and her gaze languid. Angela felt hot. Looking down was the respectful thing to do, even though she hadn’t exactly spoken out of line. This was just how she got around O’Deorain. This was just how she knew O'Deorain liked her acting.

There was a beat of silence, and then another, until O'Deorain made a noise that Angela felt in her thighs. “I don’t think we should wait longer than a month to finalise anything. We have the resources, we’ll keep our teams working on other, smaller projects, keep other sales moving,” O’Deorain decided, and she touched Angela’s arm as she walked by her, to the door.

Before she opened it, Angela cleared her throat. And perhaps it was because last night was still so fresh in her memory, because so little time had passed since she was in her space where she could let caution to the wind and let someone else take her autonomy; but she cleared her throat, and stepped forward, and kept her eyes on the last few buttons of O’Deorain’s shirt where it was untucked rather than meeting her gaze.

“Thank you, sir, for conferring with me about the matter,” she said softly, and if O’Deorain had any reaction she didn’t see it. “If I can do anything to help, please let me.”

“Of course,” O’Deorain said quietly, and did she sound strained? Or was that Angela’s imagination? “But I apologise for burdening you so often.”

“You’re a busy woman,” Angela replied, shrugging, “and I like to help ease that burden when I can.”

O’Deorain sighed, but she didn’t sound tired, and when Angela flicked her gaze up she wasn’t half as exhausted as she’d seemed, looming over her out on the floor. “I know you do. You’re much too good at it, too.”

A grin flirted at the corner of Angela’s mouth. “Isn’t that the point?”

When she left the office the floor was full, and a hundred eyes were watching her as she made her way back to her desk. Angela didn’t acknowledge anyone. Even Lena, when she hissed at her across the aisle, frantically glancing over at O'Deorain's open still-open door.

“Ange, are you alright?”

Angela only raised her brows and nodded to O’Deorain, who was rubbing her eyes behind her glasses and making her way to the breakroom and its coffee machine, which was little more than a glorified Soda-Stream.  

“Why wouldn’t I be?” she questioned back, when O’Deorain was out of earshot.

Lena looked sheepish. “I worry, is all. Moira can be rather…” She waved her hand vaguely.

“I can handle O’Deorain,” Angela said, prying open her laptop and giving Lena one last pursed-lip look before entering her login. “You don’t need to worry about that.”

Lena seemed to get the message that conversation was over for now, and Angela quietly let out the breath she was holding when she spied her turning back to her own computer and settling into her own work. For once Angela was glad that she looked so ragged; everyone in the office seemed to understand to some degree what Angela was almost always putting herself through, but rather than help her they pitied her. At least they stayed off of her back.

If she played the role up a little, no one had to know. No one had to know, about her need to be needed.

From the corner of her eye she watched O’Deorain, stooping over the coffee machine and glaring at Genji when he followed her in, only to spin on his heel and stalk out. Next Jesse edged into the room, and in the span of five seconds attempted to strike up a one-sided conversation only to wilt, disengage, shove his sandwich in the fridge, and make haste just like Genji had. Angela felt a little bad for her. O’Deorain wasn’t a nasty boss by any means. She was just… different. She was awkward.

O’Deorain was awkward, but not in the endearing way. She was standoffish, and brusque, and partial to conversations that read like they were bullet points. Angela had only ever seen her outside of the office once, and that was briefly, at one of the _specialty_ bars downtown, and they’d both deigned to never speak nor think of it.

Well, that wasn’t entirely true. On the Monday after they’d both inadvertently come out to one another, Angela played with the idea of bringing it up. Subtly, nonchalantly, perhaps while O’Deorain watched and waited for the coffee machine to finish gurgling. But on that Monday O’Deorain made a point to not look at her, not even once, and Angela swallowed the opportunity, disappointed, but not for any good reason she could put her finger on.

Angela hadn’t gone back to the bar after that. That was when Winston’s team had its breakthrough, and she simply became much too busy to spend her nights anywhere other than sat in front of her laptop, tidying up O’Deorain’s loose ends.

Though, Angela thought sardonically, she didn’t really need to go out to find herself a good time, did she? But Genji and Lena didn’t have to know that their tip off had worked, and really, wouldn’t it be a little awkward to admit to calling a sexline that they presumably used, too?

What if they’d talked to the Irish operator she’d had? Angela didn’t like the strange smart of jealousy that itched a corner of her heart. So she didn’t think on it. And she knew that she could never let them find out about the calls.

Call. There’d been one.

There’d only _be_ one.

Oh, but, she’d rather enjoyed herself, hadn’t she? And from the comfort of her own home--

“Lost in thought there, Angie?”

“I’m fine, Lena, thank you.”

“Well, you’re staring at Moira, and she’s staring right back at you, so…”

Angela cleared her throat. “Thank you, Lena.”

“Anytime, Ange.”


	3. A Date

She had no weekend plans. Angela never had weekend plans. But that didn’t mean she wasn’t smothered with work; she was up to her gills in pitch drafts for O’Deorain’s upcoming week, and it took til Sunday to have everything finalised, and to have approved all the progress reports streaming in from downstairs in the lab. By the time she’d backed up the files and pigeon-holed them into the appropriate inboxes it was well past five in the afternoon, and with a huff Angela pushed out from her chair and padded out into the hallway.

Her house was a simple two bedroom cottage affair, filled with trinkets from her travels and photos of her friends. Sure, they were pictures from when Genji and Lena had dragged her from clubs to museums alike, but they counted. They filled the space and made it less empty. In the kitchen Angela pried open her fridge and cringed. She poked through her fruit bowl on the counter and clicked her tongue. And eventually she unlocked her phone and sat on the couch, turning on the TV set and keeping it on mute.

It wasn’t a bad thing that her only starred numbers were her favourite take-outs as well as O’Deorain’s emergency-only contact number, and she was sure she wasn’t the only person in the world with contacts like this. She chose Thai and slumped into the couch as the line rang, biting at the blunt ends of her nails while she waited. Angela watched the woman on the television as she silently explained the correct method of landscaping with mondo grass, and by the time the call connected she’d drifted somewhere else entirely, and startled back to life when the server cleared their throat.

She considered her pyjama bottoms and flyaway hair, and decided to place the order for delivery. Half an hour, the server said, and thanked her before hanging up. The screen lit up when Angela looked at it, and remained opened on her call log. A list of black titles with little stars beside them, all saved, bar one eight digit number, all alone and out of place.

Angela worried her bottom lip. She looked at her clock. Half an hour to kill. The lady on the television was negotiating the tangled roots of a yucca tree and paying her no mind.

It wasn’t as though anyone would find out. And she was an adult. And she’d done all her work already. So there.

Her thumb hovered over the number for a beat. Of all things Angela didn’t expect to feel _excited_ like this, as though she were a teenager sneaking out past bedtime to drink or fuck. It wasn’t as though she did either very often, though, and before Angela realised she was pressing the button and her screen was shifting.

She brought her phone to her ear as if on auto-pilot.

“ _Thank you for calling Talon, a service created by and for the queer community where we take pride in bringing your fantasies to life, genuinely and authentically…”_

As the message sounded Angela leant over and rifled through her handbag for her wallet and her credit card, and she flipped it through her fingers as she waited for the call to connect.

She didn’t have to wait long. Probably because it was half five on a Sunday, when normal people were preparing dinner for their families and dusting off weekend sports and finalising forgotten homework. The line clicked, and the lady with the sultry Latin accent was making her cheeks warm, and Angela told her her credit card details for the second time.

“Beautiful, and do you have a service you’re interested in?”

“Um.” Angela glanced at the TV. Would it be strange to ask for the first operator again? Surely there were regular clients to these sorts of things, but Angela still felt silly: this wasn’t a coffee shop, or a bar, or a cruisy lunch spot, where faces and voices and orders were all aligned together. This was one-off. This was a sexline.

This was anonymous. That was the benefit. Angela licked her lips. “I was wondering if I could speak to the Irish operator, in Dominance/submission?”

The woman’s surprise was obvious and it cut through Angela like a cold blade, but she cleared her throat, and the put-on sexy husk returned to her voice, and Angela could hear a keyboard tapping. “Oh, you’re one of hers. Sorry, it seems like she’s on a call at the moment, but I can place you in the queue.”

Angela didn’t know why she felt dejected. She didn’t have a right to. “How long is the wait?” she asked, hoping the disappointment in her voice wasn’t too obvious.

“Hard to say.” The woman chuckled to herself. Something clenched in Angela’s chest. “We do have a call-back system if you’d like, though you’ll have to send your details through again. Otherwise I can _highly_ recommend Mistress Widow, who specialises in humiliation and degradation--”

“Oh.” Angela glanced at the clock again. “Thank you, but I might decline. To both. Sorry.”

“No, not at all. Your credit card has not been charged. We hope you call back again soon.”

The line cut. Angela groaned, slumping down into the lounge and hiding her face in the cushions.

This was stupid. She was stupid. Genji and Lena were immature fools with too much time to kill, if they entertained this kind of sexline-calling, relationship-forgoing lifestyle.

And O’Deorain was--

A curse. To her mind, her body, to everything.

When her fingers crept beneath the waistband of her pyjama bottoms she wasn’t wet but she still flinched, and even her own touch made something tighten in her belly. She buried her face in the couch and pressed her knees up beneath her, and with the leverage came room for her hand to move, her fingers finding their place over her clit. She pressed slightly, firmly, and brought her other arm up to pull her shirt over her bra, bunched at her collar, and her fingers slipped into the cup and over her nipple, and god, she wasn’t even aroused, she didn’t need to come, she only called because she wanted to--

Angela wanted someone to reassure her. She wanted Sir to tell her that she had done well, to thank her for finishing her work.

And wasn’t Sir just a find? She even sounded like O’Deorain. _Better_ than O’Deorain, because _she’d_ never whisper in Angela’s ear hot and low and filthy just how she’d fuck her.

Oh, god. _Perhaps_ she was aroused. But that was only situational. The thrill of the taboo, of such an illicit reason to phone. That voice crept into her mind again, the memory so fresh it was like she was _there,_ and when Angela spread her knees and her fingers worked over herself she felt electric.

She thought about the hardwood floor in O’Deorain’s office and how cool it might feel with her face pressed into it and O’Deorain watching her from her chair, and Angela felt _sexy._

It was easy to imagine the soft cotton of O’Deorain’s pant leg, the slender, toned thigh lying just beneath. Picturing herself resting her cheek to her leg, perhaps dressed in something O’Deorian might like, or nothing at all, wasn’t alien to her mind or unwelcome.

Picturing O’Deorain bending her over her desk wasn’t a fantasy Angela hadn’t dipped into before. It was her favourite. Imaging the office, the venetian shutterblinds closed, the door locked, O’Deorain’s tie holding her mouth and stifling her sounds.

Angela shuddered. She could feel the tightness low in her belly beginning to crescendo. If she raised her hips and kept her touch quick—

When the doorbell rang Angela’s eyes flew open and she flopped back on the lounge. When it rang a second time, still dazed and chasing a rapidly fleeting high, Angela shook her head and sighed.

Then she pushed herself off the lounge and made sure her sweatpants were secure around her waist before she answered the door.

~

“Someone had a good weekend,” said Lena the moment she fell into her cube across the aisle. “Spill the deets.”

Angela snorted. “I wore trackpants even though I didn’t exercise. My neighbours didn’t invite the entire university over on Saturday night. And the only other human being I spoke to was my take out delivery driver. He said less than ten words to me.” Angela pointed out the fact with her coffee cup, as if it was of note, then took a sip. "A new record."

When Lena stayed silent Angela cocked a brow and offered her a glance. Lena was staring at her in an open-mouthed frown, and she shook her head, disappointed. “Angie, you need to get out more.”

As if you prove her point Angela tapped open her emails and spun the clicker wheel on her mouse. A blur of black and white crossed the screen, and even though they were emails Angela had already responded to on Saturday it seemed to prove her point. “As you can see, I’m much too busy.”

It wasn’t a complaint, even though that’s the way Lena seemed to always take it. Though not this time; she took it as an opportunity. Lena shook her head and her spiky brown hair bounced before snapping back into its gelled place. “Nuh-uh. This weekend you’re coming out with me, alright?”

Angela would have laughed, but with a sense of dread that sprouted in her stomach and seeped it tendrils everywhere else in her body, she realised Lena was serious. “What, like, clubbing?” Angela shook her head, crossed her legs for something to do. “Lena, you know how old I am, yes?”

“ _And?_ Hanamura isn’t like other clubs.”

“Yes, because it’s a gay club!”

“Exactly!” Lena sighed, sounding slightly exasperated. But then she sat up in her chair and narrowed her eyes. Angela stiffened. “Wait, how do you know?”

Angela couldn’t hide the way her eyes scanned the room, locating and settling on O’Deorain over by the break room with alarming haste. Beside her Lena made a noise, and Angela cleared her throat, looking anywhere else than their boss.

She waved Lena off. “How do you think I know? I also know that it isn’t for me. From experience.” Across the way O’Deorain seemed to be talking to someone, though who remained a mystery. The way her shirt was tucked into her pants left little to the imagination, though, straining over her back from her broad shoulders to her tapered waist. Without realising Angela bit her bottom lip. And then she remembered where she was, and just who was sitting beside her.

“Come on, one night won’t hurt,” Lena pressed, swinging into the aisle. She didn't seem to have noticed Angela's wandering gaze. “You’ll really enjoy yourself. And there’re these  _girls…_ ”

Angela couldn’t stop herself from blushing. Like a _teenager._ “Leave me alone.”

“Wait,” piped Genji, rolling out from his cubicle up the way, and it was then Angela realised she'd made a crucial mistake when she'd decided to squawk the words _gay_ and  _club_ in the same sentence. Around  _Genji._ “She didn’t say no.”

“Who didn’t say no to what?” asked Hana from the opposite side of the floor.

Lena’s grin was terrifying and took up all space in the room. “Angela’s coming clubbing this weekend.”

“No way,” intercepted Lucio, and if there was a benevolent God watching her Angela prayed to be smited and killed instantly. With a groan she flopped forward to her elbows and turned to glare at Lena behind her shielding palms as the entire floor suddenly became privy to their conversation.

Lena ignored her though, and probably not by accident. “We’re gonna put you in a nice pair of stockings, boots to kill, the tiniest dress— oh! Ms O’Deorain!”

 _Kill me._ Perhaps if she thought hard enough it might take effect.

Silence fell across the cubicles and Angela’s heart pounded, her body stuck hunched forward and eyes wide, trained to O’Deorain’s shoes. When their boss spoke it was icy. Angela felt frozen.

“Sorry to interrupt.” O’Deorain didn’t sound it, Angela thought. She sounded crisp. Firm. It made the hairs on Angela’s neck raise. “I only wondered what the commotion was. It seemed...important.”

“It wasn’t,” Angela said quickly, before Lena could open her big mouth. She straightened and flashed O’Deorain a passing smile, eyes crinkling and lips tight. O’Deorain was staring down at her, and they were so close that if Angela swung slightly to the left their legs would have brushed. For a second she was overcome with the urge to do just so, just briefly, just to feel her body. Angela swallowed. “Sorry to cause such a ruckus, sir.”

“Never mind it. Actually, I wanted to ask if I could have a word, when you’re ready.” Her eyes were trained to Angela. O’Deorain’s head was cocked, and she braced a hand against the side of the cubicle. She watched Angela as though she was thinking of a hundred different ways to pull her apart and find out how she worked.

In her lap Angela folded her hands. She met O’Deorain’s gaze and wet her lips. “Of course.”

Surely O’Deorain could hear the way her heart thundered. Surely she could see the way she fidgeted and twitched, just imperceptible enough that to any other eye it would go unnoticed. But not to O’Deorain. She caught everything.

Like she realised she’d outstayed her welcome, or perhaps it was that she could feel Lena’s wary watch on her back, O’Deorain straightened, nodded. She pushed off the cubicle wall a little awkwardly if anything, and turned on her boot without a word. Just as Angela threw a scathing look to Lena, O’Deorain turned back, though she didn’t meet her eyes.

“By the way, Lena,” she added, “you should take her to Oasis. It’s much more modern than Hanamura.”

Before either Lena or Angela could reply O’Deorain was walking off, back down the aisle to her own office.

They stayed silent for a beat. Then Lena made a strangled noise. “What does she _mean_ Oasis is better than Hanamura? Hanamura is the shit.”

“I’m sure it is, to you,” Angela muttered, ducking her head from the strange looks she was getting across the floor from Genji. “Listen, I can’t promise I’ll make it this weekend. The next coming weeks are going to be...delicate, I suppose is the best description.”

“With the Overwatch versus Vishkar death battle?”

Angela shrugged and logged into her computer. “We're going to try to filibuster this whole ordeal, and then ideally sell to Overwatch. If it even goes at all through. We’re seeing how long we can wait, before things start getting restless.”

Lena’s tone soured. “Does that mean you’ll be working even longer hours?”

This again. Angela worried her lip. “I don’t mind, you know. And O’Deorain isn’t so bad. You just don’t like her solely because she’s Em’s estranged aunt.”

Lena muttered under her breath. “Never should have told you that…” But then she huffed, and gave Angela a tired smile. “I just worry.”

“Maybe if you got your own work done instead of gossiping so much Ange wouldn’t have a lifetime’s worth of overtime!” Genji called, somewhere in the distance, heard but not seen.

That just made Lena grumble anew. She turned to her own computer at least and Angela shook her head. There was blissful silence for a handful of moments, til Lena started to fidget, and Angela knew whatever was stuck in her mind wouldn’t be caged there for long.

“But still,” Lena suddenly added, almost desperate in her final plea. She looked uncomfortable, her brow furrowed and her cheeks red. “You don’t have to call her 'sir'. That’s just...unnecessary.”

Angela snorted, waving Lena off. When Lena realised she wasn’t going to be getting a reply she huffed and muttered and turned back to her own monitor, mumbling something about nothing that Angela was particularly interested in knowing.

The subject was finally dropped. And Angela trawled through her emails, eyeing a response from Ana that she forwarded onto O’Deorain without reading. There was a reply from Vishkar, too, and Angela pinched her nose and decided that it was still a little too early to tackle the company and its persistent sales rep just yet. She'd only had one coffee so far today. If she was going anywhere near Vaswani, that needed to change.

When she pushed up from her desk Lena glanced at her, though Angela ignored it. Her heels clipped delicately on the linoleum floor, muted by the sounds of the office. Staff were still regaling the details of their weekends amongst each other, taking calls, clacking keyboards. The only solace she found was in the break room, and it’s gurgling coffee machine pressed into the counter’s corner.

Angela thumbed the button and sighed, watching the shot dribbling into a mug with a faraway mind. When she came back to herself she turned to the fridge and bent at the waist, reaching into the back where Genji had shoved her almond milk. Angela grunted as she fished around, parting Tupperware and partially-consumed takeout with gentle care so as to not decimate the fragile ecosystem of haphazardly stacked foodstuff.  Her fingers pushed the bottle and Angela made a noise as she extracted it.

And nearly dropped to the floor, instantly, when she realised O’Deorain was in the room with one foot in the doorway. Her fingers were curled around the door’s frame. Her gaze was heavy, eyes low, as though she’d been staring at Angela’s ass-

Ridiculous. Angela scolded herself, looked elsewhere.  “Sorry,” she said quietly, silently hoping that if she ignored the heat in her cheeks it would go away quicker. “I didn’t realise you were there, sir.”

“No, I…” O’Deorain blinked dumbly at her. Angela found herself looking up, only to get caught in O’Deorain’s stare. She seemed… her mismatched eyes were dark, and if simply thinking it didn’t make Angela feel tight in her belly she’d call her gaze hungry. But that couldn’t be right. O’Deorain didn’t see her like that.

“Coffee?” Angela prompted, when it was clear O’Deorain couldn’t find anything else to say. She nodded and stepped into the room proper, pulling out a chair at the communal dining table.

“Please forgive me,” O’Deorain sighed, resting her elbows on the table and carding her fingers through her hair, unintentionally mussing it. Angela thought the notion was endearingly cute, and for some reason it made her chest hurt. So she turned back to the coffee machine, watched it intently instead. “I went to bed disastrously late last night.”

“Work reasons?” Angela found herself asking, though she didn’t really know why. It wasn’t her business what O’Deorain did on her weekends. Even if a small part of her wanted it to be.

O’Deorain made a strange noise part way between a laugh and a groan. “You could say that,” she muttered, welcoming the mug of coffee Angela slid in front of her. Black. Even when she was sitting the woman was still impossibly tall, she was almost at Angela's eye level.

“What about you?” she probed after a tentative sip and a soft hum. “You didn’t work all weekend, did you, Angela?”

Now Angela made an awkward noise. “Well, not _all_ weekend.”

O’Deorain raised a skeptical brow. “You know you’re allowed to take a day off?”

“Seems as though next weekend I won’t have a choice in the matter. You overheard Lena’s taking me out clubbing.” Angela stared down at her coffee, and she leant back against the table, to O’Deorain’s side. Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad. Maybe she’d even enjoy herself. But mostly Angela knew, with certainty, that nothing would come of it.

“I didn’t take you for a party girl,” O’Deorain said evenly, a note to her tone that Angela was unused to hearing. It wasn’t jealousy, simply couldn’t be. It wasn’t envy. What did Angela have that O’Deorain envied? It was something so guarded and soft that it was barely even there.

But she felt desperate to dismiss any notions O’Deorain had, to keep her image as saintly as she could manage. “I’m not,” Angela implored, “I’m not that kind of person.”

It felt like deja vu, saying that, and when Angela remembered why she blushed. When she remembered yesterday, remembered the disappointment of learning Sir was indisposed, she felt like a liar.

“Nothing wrong with those who do enjoy the nightlife,” O’Deorain suddenly countered, light and conversationally, taking a lazy sip of coffee and humming. “I know I don’t mind a night out.”

She felt like she'd been lead into a trap. Why did almost every interaction Angela have with O’Deorain end like this? Frustration and something else-- the need to do better, to be prepared for O'Deorain's mood swings. She realised, then, that she probably wasn't supposed to take note of the strange bite to O'Deorain's tone before, wasn't meant to react to it. Angela pursed her lips and kept herself guarded. She wasn’t annoyed but she wished...that things were straight forward. Black and white. She wished that someone held the rules and a leash in each hand, and all she had to do was follow them both.

In her mind she saw O’Deorain at _that_ place again, leant against the bar and dressed in leather pants and riding boots, staring squarely at her and wearing shock all over her face.

“Perhaps I might see you on the weekend,” O’Deorain continued when Angela stayed silent. “Granted work doesn’t give either one of us too devastating a migraine.”

Was...O’Deorain asking her out? No. Of course not. She was being friendly. She knew that Angela would be out with her friends, not alone, not a date. She was filling the silence that Angela left open and for the taking. “Of course, sir,” Angela neatly replied. She folded her thoughts away and finished her coffee, but before she could clear O’Deorain’s cup the woman was standing, and taking her own from her gentle grip. Their fingers brushed, O’Deorain’s long and cool. Angela’s chest clenched.

“Let me,” O’Deorain murmured, voice low. She was close. She was so close that Angela could smell her cologne. She could smell the pomade she usually used to keep her burnt auburn hair back off her face, though now it hung around her ears, artfully messy and curly and beautiful. “It’s only fair that I clean up, hmm? And then we can move to the office.”

“Thank you, sir,” Angela found herself saying. She kept her eyes lowered, didn't look higher than O'Deorain's throat where the buttons on her collar were done up tight, three shiny little black stones that weighed her gaze. If anyone walked in, or looked up from their cubicle, they'd be seen. But she didn't step out of O’Deorain’s radius like a normal person should do, would do, and she couldn't bring herself to reason just why. O’Deorain was her _boss._ She was stunted, abrasive, _awkward,_ although now it seemed like some kind of change had passed over her, because Angela couldn’t remember her effect ever being this strong. She couldn’t remember ever falling this hard for it. Oh, God. “I’ll be ready whenever you want.”

 _Ready for what?_ Whispered part of her mind. _Ready to be bent over her desk?_ Oh, God, Angela shouldn’t have flicked her eyes up. O’Deorain was watching her. Her eyes were roving over her face, and Angela felt naked.

“Good.” O’Deorain said lowly, softly. She watched Angela for another beat, and then when she turned and walked away, to the sink, Angela felt like she could breathe again. “Amari wants to meet on Wednesday morning. I’d like you to accompany me, if you don’t mind.”

Of course she didn’t.

Her heart was pounding in her chest. She kept her thighs pressed tightly together.

When Angela walked out onto the office floor, she didn’t look back O'Deorain, and didn't see the way she was watching her.


	4. A Proxy

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry this ones a little later! Hope you all enjoy it, and have a happy and safe Halloween!

If Angela could turn back time ten years she could be sure she’d find her younger self plotting a detailed life plan, complete with career milestones, a wedding, and even the beginnings of a family. If she could have seen herself at present, desperately alone and sat against the pillows on her bed, staring down at the little black line of numbers she was becoming much too familiar with, Angela knew she’d have gawked. Next to her on the side table her wine glass was nearly empty. Perched on the wall, to the left of the dresser, the clock told her it was just past nine. This was _all_ familiar. _Damningly_ familiar.

But just as damning was the memory of how O’Deorain had looked at her today, which sprung up whenever she shut her eyes. When it was quiet, Angela could still hear the way she spoke, low and dangerous and smooth. She shut her eyes, and saw standing in front of her, less than a foot of space between them in the breakroom where anyone could have caught them.

Without realising it Angela let her stockinged thighs fall open. Even though the heating was low she was sweating, and popping a few buttons on her blouse did little to cool her down. Despite how much it made her writhe with frustration, O’Deorain was still in her system, and Angela needed to get her out.

Part of her knew that this wasn’t the answer, but the part of her that didn’t care presided over her mind. It didn’t care that perhaps these calls were only _inhibiting_ her behaviour, rather than curbing it.

It whispered, _do it._ It reminded her just how tall O’Deorain was, just how small she felt crowded by her, and just how much, despite her better judgements, she _loved it._

Angela’s thumb hovered over the number in her phone for a beat. Then she pressed down on it without a second thought.

As she listened to the recording she sipped at her wine and settled back into the pillows, pulling her hair from its bun to let it spill around her shoulders. A man was operating the line this time, and while he sounded American Angela was certain she could hear a light accent hiding on the edge of his tone. It didn’t matter much, because quick enough he was sighing, slightly irritated, and asking her for her credit card details for a second time.

“Sorry,” Angela quipped, before rattling the digits off.

Maybe it was shaping up to be a long night. The operator got straight to the point, didn’t embellish or attempt to seduce her money from her as the Latin lady had. “Are you over 21?”

“I am,” Angela confirmed.

“And which one of our services would you like to use tonight?”

This time when Angela asked, she didn’t falter. She wasn’t embarrassed. Maybe it was the no-bullshit way the operator regarded her. It was probably just due to the wine. “I was wondering if the Irish woman in Dominance/submission was free, actually.”

The silence on the other end of the line was poignant and only lasted a beat. The operator recovered with a hum, and Angela heard the muffled clicking of a keyboard being prodded. “She _is_ currently free. I’ll patch you through. Thank you for calling Talon, we hope you enjoy our service.”

Emboldened and imbued, Angela crossed her legs, sat up a little straighter. The line rang over thrice before there was a soft click, before there was a quiet breath, and then Angela felt like she’d been hit by a truck, because her heart completely stopped and her lungs were suddenly bereft of air.

“Thank you for keeping me company,” Sir said easily, even though to Angela mustering a contingent sentence felt nothing less than a challenge the likes of scaling the alps back home. “Who do I have the pleasure of joining tonight?”

The confidence she was broiling in before turned cold. Angela swallowed dryly, shut her eyes and steadied herself with a breath. What if she didn’t remember her? What if Sir thought she was borderline creepy and stalkerish for calling again, for asking for _her_ specifically. The Latina lady’s voice floated into her head. _You’re one of hers._ So not unusual, but she wasn’t unique, either. Angela didn’t know which was the lesser of two evils.

Anonymous, she reminded herself, this was all anonymous. She could say whatever she liked. If Sir was uncomfortable, it wouldn’t have any real-world repercussions for Angela. That was the benefit of the service, though she’d never tell Genji or Lena that.

“Mercy,” Angela answered,  before the window of silence grew uncomfortable. “You could call me Mercy.”

There was a noise on the other side of the call Angela thought she wasn’t supposed to catch. It sounded like the rustle of clothes, and inspired Angela to imagine someone sitting up straight in their seat, just as she was.

“Did you perhaps call me last week, Mercy?” Sir asked, something perky in her voice. Angela scrunched her eyes shut, and swore beneath her breath.

“I did,” she admitted quietly. “I rather enjoyed our...session.”

And now Sir would make a sound of disgust and terminate the call, and Angela would delete the contact and finish her wine and go back to her regular, vanilla life. She'd go back to work. She'd go back to balancing on the line between wanting and hating O'Deorain. Angela waited for the line to cut, and make way for the ensuing overbearing silence. But it never came.

Looking back on it Angela would say that this was the moment it all started to tilt to one side of the scale, that the seam between the two worlds of Angela’s realities and Angela’s fantasies would go to rip. Because Sir didn’t tut, or break the illusion. “Oh,” she chuckled instead, dark and low and _real_ enough to send a shiver rippling across Angela’s shoulders, “I’d been hoping you might call again, because, you see, I _greatly_ enjoyed our last session.”

Angela couldn’t help herself. Her voice was quiet, but her mind was loud and her heart had all of a sudden started beating in her chest once more. “Really?” She pushed herself up against the pillows, accidentally let her surprised smile slip through to her voice.

Of course not, the rational part of her attempted to fight. This was all scripted; Angela was only a job.

But Sir made a tight, desperate noise. “Mercy, it has been such a long time since a client has been so beautifully submissive in not only sexuality but in nature. You said this would be your little secret. I hoped you meant it.”

And that was all it took. Angela was gone, falling fast and hard into that place inside herself she kept hidden, kept secret. But now she had someone to let in and share it with.

“I’m glad you called,” Sir went on to say, accent curling around every vowel and sparking up something contagious flowing in Angela’s veins, “but I can’t help but wonder if you were merely bored, looking for a way to fill the time, or if there was something that lead you to being here with me, past nine on a Monday night?”

There certainly was: the other Sir. Awkward and stilted and stern, impervious, and so incredibly reverse to this one. And yet Angela still wanted her, still melted when O’Deorain gave her the scantest time of day or an errant glance across the floor.

Professionally, Angela knew nothing could ever happen between them. Personally, too, because they were both desperate workaholics and a relationship could never thrive between the cubicles of the office floor. It couldn’t sleep on the settee in O’Deorain’s office each night. O’Deorain was as stubborn as Angela. Their personalities just...didn’t click, no matter how hard the stifling tension between them attempted to bind them.

Angela wasn’t remorseful about it. She was an adult, and she took pride in her work before she took heed of what her heart wanted. And now she had this number, had this proxy that seemed so perfectly crafted to fit her gaps that she had half a mind to question Genji if he’d seen her browsing history. O’Deorain wasn’t that convenient. O’Deorain wasn’t simply a call she could indulge in the comfort of her home and could end without unwanted emotional repercussion.

O’Deorain was work. She was unpaid overtime on a weekend. She was impossible, impenetrable, and rightly so.

“I haven’t been able to get you out of my head.” Angela was telling the truth. Just not to the right person. “These last few days I’ve felt...untethered.”

“There’s not much I can do physically,” Sir sighed, though a smile was behind it, “not being there with you. But I have the feeling you don’t want to be restrained, exactly.”

And there, right there, that was it. As though Sir was unlocking the door and ushering her in, Angela dove head first into her space, where she was free of inhibitions and free of duty.  Sir commanded her power without needing to be seen in person, and as though she was her Domme, Angela heeled.

“Please, Sir, how can I service you?”

With her eyes shut it felt like she was blindfolded, and Angela could pretend she was somewhere other than her bedroom; a nameless hotel, or a dark, padded room in the back of Chateau Guillard, or an office with oiled timber floors and whorls in the wood. There was a chuckle in the darkness. It sent electricity jolting down her spine.

“I adore your fervor, Mercy, but this is about pleasuring you.”

“You must know how I operate,” Angela said breathily on a quiet laugh. She imagined her there, poised in the doorway and pinning her with her mismatched gaze. “That by telling me what to do, you will be...making me feel good.”

There was a satisfied sound from the other end of the line, and Sir didn’t push the point long. “You said you were on your bed. Do you have pillows?”

“Yes, Sir.”

“And are you still in your panties?”

“Yes, Sir.”

The chuckle Sir huffed made her flush. It was as though she knew the answer to the question all along. “If I was there I’d love to watch you shimmy out of them, love to see what else you’re wearing.”

It was easy to settle into the motions. “I’m wearing a red pencil skirt. My blouse is grey. I have it unbuttoned now, Sir.”

There was a beat of strangely stunted silence that came came from nowhere and left Angela blinking, self-conscious, before Sir hummed lowly and it fizzled from Angela’s mind. “Skirts are such a versatile uniform. _Easy access,_ is a rather crude saying.”

“But so accurate,” Angela found herself replying, eyes wide and heart jackhammering away in her chest.

“Sounds like a statement, Mercy,” Sir commented warmly, lilting behind a sly smile. “You have experience?”

“I’d like to, Sir.”

"What have you fantasied about, wearing that little skirt of yours?"

Angela bit her lip. The particular daydream that drifted to the forefront of her mind wasn’t unfamiliar, especially when the night was deepening, as it was tonight, and when she felt tight between the hips, like she did now. As though her body was conditioned to it Angela felt herself going wet, and she buzzed as her mind lit up.

It was her, in a locked office, in O'Deorain’s lap, with her thighs open and her panties down around an ankle leaving her exposed, all so she could grind down against a slack-clothed leg.

“Grind on you,” Angela said thickly, “if you’d allow, Sir.”

There was a content little sound on the other side of the line, a hum of pleasure. Angela felt a shiver ripple across her shoulders, elicited by some imaginary hand patting her head and telling her she’d done a good job.

“Wearing the skirt, of course.”

“I like to imagine that I’m still at work while doing it, sometimes.”

“Kinky. Are you into exhibition, Mercy?”

Angela bit her bottom lip, glanced around her room. Everything was neat, and everything had its place. The blinds over the windows were pulled, but the thought lingered, and something niggled in her belly. “A little. But I don’t know if I could even go through with it though, really. It would make for some awkward workplace gossip the next day, to say the least.”

“Well, that’s what this setting is good for, yes?” Sir chuckled. “It’s fantasy. You can do whatever you like.”

 _Even pretend you’re my boss?_ Angela wanted to ask; but that would be tiptoeing too close to reality.

“Whatever I like…” Angela said instead. She pushed herself onto her knees and reached back for a pillow, the one on the right, empty side of the bed. She hadn’t done this since she was a teenager, but sliding the pillow between her thighs and settling down onto it came naturally, and the cotton against where she was wet and soft was harsher than she remembered, but not in an unpleasant way.

“Sounds like you’re making yourself comfortable, Mercy,” Sir said quietly. “Did I give you permission?”

“No, Sir.” Heat filled her chest like air in her lungs. She thumbed the buttons on her blouse open. “Would you forgive me if I told you I’m imagining this pillow as your thigh?”

“Are you?”

“Yes, Sir.”

“Then yes. Keep your clothes on, and shut your eyes. You’re still at work, in my office, and the door is open.”

Angela sucked a breath between her teeth. Against her leg, where it was balled, her fist clenched and shook.

“I have my left hand behind you, pressed to your lower back, so I can guide you as you rock yourself forwards and backwards against my leg. Your high-heels are dangling, barely brushing the floor. You’re held entirely at my, well.” Sir laughed, hot and breathy. “At my mercy.”

Angela kept one hand trembling around the phone, the other clenched at the seam of the pillow as she moved, shifting until the found the spot that turned her thighs to water and her spine into something not unlike an electrical current.

“Don’t move too much, pet,” Sir continued, “you’ll rouse suspicion. Grind down on me slowly, long strokes, so no one might get curious and poke their head in to see what I’m doing to you.”

Somehow, it was better. Better than hard and fast release. Oddly… it felt like she was actually having sex. And when she shut her eyes, it was almost sickening how well she could imagine herself in a real office, with a real body beneath her. With O’Deorain’s leg pressed to her pussy, and O’Deorain’s pants being coated with her slick.

“I don’t think I’ll last long, Sir,” Angela admitted, unable to keep herself from imagining O’Deorain’s cologne, or the way her hands were so broad she could undoubtedly span Angela’s waist with her grip.

“What if we played our little counting game again? I’ve found it trains subs well.”

Angela sucked a shaky breath _,_ pitching forward but keeping her hips working, keeping the slow, hard pace in time. Her fingers curled in the duvet, while the others held her phone so tightly she almost worried about it cracking. Almost. Knocking around in her head was that word,  _subs._ More than one.  _You're one of hers,_ the operator had said, and when jealousy reared itself Angela did nothing to quash it. 

Because she knew that there was nothing to be jealous of. 

Because she could perform, too, and she could be perfect. Angela was the best at what she did, in any field. 

“Honestly, Sir, I think that would make me come faster.”

“Then what would you like me to do, Mercy?”

Angela didn't need to think before she spoke. Unlike at work, or anywhere in public, in her everyday life, there were no repercussions here; but there was no going back, either. Angela found that she wasn't worried. In fact, in both surprised and settled her just how comfortable she was, especially when she told Sir, “I want you to choke me, please, Sir.”

A millisecond of stunned silence; and then Sir made a sound somewhere between a moan and a growl, and it was deep and dark and throaty and Angela felt it in her gut.

“Put the phone on loudspeaker.”

Her voice had gone gravelly, her accent so thick and natural that it took Angela a sliver of a second to understand, before she tapped the phone’s screen and dropped it by her knee on the bed.

“ _P_ _lease,_ Sir.”

“Mercy, I want you to wrap your hand around your throat. Good girl, perfect. When you squeeze put pressure on the sides of your neck rather than on your trachea. At this point I should mention that the safe word is rabbit, unless you would prefer to use one of your own.”

“I trust you, Sir,” Angela said, “I’d like to use your word.”

Angela wriggled forward slightly on the the pillow, and with her left hand gripping the fabric should could wrap her right over the front of her throat. The temptation to start squeezing without Sir’s order was sweet but Angela shut her eyes, waited. Even if Sir wouldn’t know, couldn’t have known, she waited.

Until Sir told her, “Hold now, one, two, three, four-- and let go.”

“Oh my God.” Thank goodness she lived alone, with plenty of space between her house and her neighbours'. “Thank you, Sir--”

“Again,” Sir ordered, breathless. Angela thought she heard a note of wonder, or perhaps disbelief, hanging on her tone. But she chalked it down to simply her accent.

Her own hand never felt this good around her neck. Damn it, a _pillow_ had never felt this good. When she shut her eyes and squeezed the fantasy came back, of a slacked thigh, an open door, her tight skirt hiked around her thighs and her kitten heels barely brushing the floor.

“One, two, three, four, five-- let go. I’ve got you”

“Sir,” Angela gasped, and her voice shook, shook just as hard as her legs were. “I’m close, I’m so close, Sir.”

“Did I say you could come?”

The question felt like a slap in the face, and it was only then that Angela realised something had shifted in Sir, in her voice, and she couldn’t place when the change had happened. Her words were no longer soft, her questions didn't come on a purr and they weren't coaxing, gentle things. She wasn’t tiptoeing around Angela’s feelings anymore. Now, she was taking. She was saying what _she_ liked to say, to hear what she wanted to hear.

And Angela wanted to give her everything, everything she desired, like it came from her core. As though satisfying Sir was as innate as her soul, and as needed as breathing. “I’ll only come when you say I can, Sir, I promise. I only want to please you.”

Sir _moaned._ It was unscripted. It wasn’t fake. “How are you so perfect? If I were there with you, I swear--”

“What would you do to me, Sir?”

Her thumb was just brushing over her jugular, and in her neck her pulse hammered. Angela’s fingers curled into the pillow, held it in place as she rode it, as the tension in her belly began to unravel throughout her body.

Sir’s voice was shot through and even though the phone made it tinny it was easy to imagine her leaning down and pressing her lips to Angela’s ear. “I’d wrap my hand around your throat myself and make you come in my lap.”

“I’m in your lap, aren’t I? Office door open?” Angela licked her lips. “How long could you choke me for til I came?”

“One,” Sir began sharply, her own breathing ragged and heavy on the other side of the line, “two, three--”

The memories came unbidden but Angela couldn’t help it, and didn’t want to stop herself either. Because there was O’Deorain, leant over her cubicle with eyes that never left Angela’s face. O’Deorain, close enough in the cramped lunchroom to kiss, to fuck. O’Deorain, her shirt buttoned to the throat and her hair falling in her face at the bar, in that club, and Angela had stared at her feeling like if O’Deorain didn’t want her she might die.

She shut her eyes, and there was O’Deorain’s slack jaw. There were her glowing eyes swallowing Angela up whole. And in her ear, and in her imagination, O’Deorain softly said, “Mercy,” and Angela fell apart for her.

Before the electricity sizzling beneath her skin had even faded Angela was pressing the phone to her ear, propped with her shoulder as she kicked the pillow off the bed and began to strip. “Was I good?” she urged, breathless, before either could properly recover. She left a trail of clothes behind her from her bedroom to her bathroom. Sir was slow to answer, her voice heavy and tone mellow, accent soft on the edges, as though she were sleepy, as though she’d just come, too.

“You are perfect, you’re perfect for me,” Sir told her, tongue heavy, and if Angela hadn’t been still so keyed up, if her mind wasn’t so frayed and her body so damn attuned to wanting a certain response, maybe she’d have listened harder and heard. But the words went to her gut and warmed it, went to her head and made it fuzzy, and that was all she needed. Angela smiled to herself, and pulled the pins out of her hair, let them chink on the porcelain of the vanity.

“Thank you, sir. I’m so happy I pleased you.”


	5. A Realisation

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter was my favourite to write! I hope you all like it too! <3

“Who are you, and what have you done with Angela?” gawked Jesse when he fell out of the elevator and onto the office floor on Tuesday morning, and all Angela could do in response was laugh, even if it was a little nervous-sounding.

“No, seriously,” he continued, eyes wide as he took her in, looking for the catch. “Why are you so happy?”

“Am I not allowed to be happy?”

Jesse frowned. “You’re usually just so--” he waved his hand around, nodded to where her desk was stowed away in its cubicle, “--stressed out, y’know? You look good.”

“I think I know why,” piped Genji, _un_ doing the first few buttons on his shirt and slinging his hand on his cocked hip. “I’ll tell you if you stop trying to sleep with my brother.”

Jesse scrunched his nose, and threw a considering look back at Angela. Angela tried not to roll her eyes or huff, instead kicking one heel behind the other and doing a mock curtsey. “Ultimatums are dirty play, Genji," he eventually said, sounding sore.

“I’m sure Ange could tell you something about dirty play,” sang Lena before she shovelled her muesli down in one go.

“Oh my God,” groaned Hana, blocking her ears and storming to her desk. “Someone should call HR on you all.”

Angela smiled and hiked her handbag up on her shoulder as she walked through to her desk. “Sorry, Jesse. Secrets are called secrets for a reason.”

“I can’t begin to imagine what kind of secrets you might have, Angela.” O’Deorain was smiling as she passed her in the aisle, from where she had emerged from her office and begun making her way to the lunchroom and its life-saving coffee machine. She gave Angela a _look_ that Angela didn’t feel qualified dissecting, but for the first time ever she felt like she didn’t need to.

So Angela grinned, too, and didn’t let her get the last word for the first time, either. “I don’t doubt they’re unsimilar to your own, sir.”

When O’Deorain looked back at her, with an expression that was somehow both curious and coy, she was still smiling.

~

By the time O’Deorain pulled her black Mazda into the parking lot at the back of the building, the autumn air had turned Angela’s cheeks pink and her nose numb with cold. Gravel rolled and popped under tyre as she pulled up close to where Angela stood by her own humble Subaru. She wrapped her coat around herself tighter, and loosed a thin breath she didn’t realise she was holding. Through the tint covering the window Angela could see O’Deorain leaning over to clear the passenger seat, and praying that her makeup hid the sting-turned-blush on her cheeks well enough Angela crouched down for her briefcase and then stepped forward, to open the passenger door.

“Sorry I’m late,” O’Deorain muttered, lugging books over her shoulder and onto the backseat. Her hair was a mess and her shirt buttons weren’t matching -- Angela looked at her and wondered if she’d even slept at all last night. “‘Scuse the mess.”

“Don’t mind so much, sir,” Angela tried, settling down into the seat and stretching over behind O’Deorain’s chair to sit her briefcase in the footwell. When she turned back O’Deorain was watching her, only the lenses of her glasses had fogged in the heat. “You should see my car.”

“I never realise how messy it gets til I have company.”

O’Deorain didn't bother cleaning her glasses. She reached for the headrest on Angela’s seat as she looked out the rear window and reversed. Her shirt was ironed at least, and a washed-out grey that she definitely hadn’t worn yesterday. So at least she went home, Angela thought to herself, before she reached down for a metal latch on the side of the chair. The mechanism sent her rolling forward and gobbling up all the leg room that she, at her bold five-foot-seven, didn’t really need.

When they left the garage and turned out onto the empty street O’Deorain tapped the cupholder between them. “Here, the reason why we’re behind. I got you something with almond milk. Don’t ask what it is, though.”

Angela carefully extracted her warm takeaway cup as they went around a bend. “Thank you, you didn’t have to.”

“I know.” She said it much too fast, much too curtly. Angela wasn’t offended, though; O’Deorain couldn’t say or do much to surprise her these days. It wasn’t a strange thing for Angela to be the first human being O’Deorain saw in the day and the last at night, and they’d shared all manner of conversation at all manner of varying degrees of sleep deprivation. Her bluntness wasn’t a weapon to Angela. To others still, maybe. But Angela was different. “You know almond milk is shite, right?”

“I can’t drink coffee black.” Angela pulled a face to herself and realised O’Deorain was watching her from the side of her eye much too late. “It goes right through me.”

“Thanks for that.” O’Deorain pulled a face of her own. Angela laughed and blew the steam off the foam when she peeled back the plastic lid.

For a while O’Deorain just drove them through the sleepy city, and for a while Angela simply watched, as shopfronts began to light up and cafes pulled out their furniture and grocers kicked open their stand-signs. The dashboard clock told her it was just past six-thirty in the morning. On the radio soft talk-back was playing, though Angela wasn’t paying it much mind. Every now and then O’Deorain would reach down for a sip at her coffee, nestled in the cupholder, and Angela would instinctively tense. She’d wait for that hand to come to her knee, her thigh, or even higher still. She didn’t know why. It was a silly, impulsive thought that had her cheeks still burning, even though O’Deorain only had the heating on warm.

When the outside world finished waking and the pavements filled with the boots and the heels of people scurrying to work, Angela redirected her attention inside. First she fiddled with a pleat on her skirt, next she stuck her finger in her coffee cup to swipe along the side, collecting froth to stick in her mouth, and then there was O’Deorain to fix on. It was almost comical how far back her seat had been pushed to accommodate her slender legs. It was endearing how loose sprigs of her hair kept dangling over her glasses, how she kept pushing them back with a hasty hand and inclining irritation. On her shirt where she’d missed a button a section was bunched and slightly opened, and if Angela looked hard enough she could see the grey of her cotton singlet underneath.

Of course she wore a singlet. Probably tucked it into her trousers, too, to keep her shirt from riding up and exposing the flat planes of her stomach whenever she stretched. For a quick second Angela enjoyed the thought of dipping her fingers into the fly on O’Deorain’s pants and running them round the hem, teasing and mussing where she was prim and tidy, and was drawn from it when O’Deorain made an uncomfortable noise and shifted in her seat.

“You didn’t sleep in the office again, did you?” Angela always had busy hands. She always needed to be playing with something, and people often told her she should have been a surgeon rather than a sales representative from one of the leading medical science teams in the country. She began to peel apart the plastic lid of her coffee at the mouthpiece, until O’Deorain reached over and swatted her.

“There’s a plastic bag for a bin behind your seat. And I’m opting not to answer your question.”

“Well, you didn’t just make the answer glaringly obvious at all, anyway, so that’s fine.”

O’Deorain sniffed. “Good, then.”

Angela gave her a moment of peace before she started her next line of questioning. “Did you at least get five hours of sleep?”

She got another noise, this one more a chesty grumble of indignation than the throaty moan Angela knew was elicited from a smart in the back caused by a cheap settee. “When have I ever gotten five hours, Angela?”

Angela sighed, crossed one stockinged leg over the other. The toe of her ankle boot brushed the plastic of the centre console, and she didn’t miss the way O’Deorain looked down at it, and then quickly back to the road. “Are you nervous?”

“I’m never nervous.”

“Highly untrue, but I won’t tell anyone.”

“Master of secrets, aren’t you?” O’Deorain gave her a look, and Angela didn’t think it meant anything more than whatever floor gossip was floating around the office this week. It probably didn’t help that she was going alone to a covert meeting on the other side of the entire city with only her boss, but Angela doubted people would suspect anything of her and O’Deorain, alone and together. They all thought she hated her. And she should have, really, what with how much extra weight she had to pull whenever O’Deorain fell asleep at her desk by midday, or forgot to respond to possible buyers, or saddled her with unfinished and unfiled paperwork.

Or colossally fucked up by accidentally double-booking a sale of the most advanced breakthrough their scientists had ever made. But here they were.

Angela played with a tress of hair she’d curled into a neat ringlet well before dawn this morning, crossed her legs the other way. Wondered if O’Deorain was itching to look down at her as much as possible like she hoped she was, without driving them into the line of sky-high buildings plotted along either side of the street.

“Got any secrets about Amari?” O’Deorain suddenly said, and Angela blinked. When she didn’t answer fast enough, O’Deorain continued, “I’ve never met the woman, officially. So what should I expect?”

“Oh.” Angela licked her lips. A tight mouth, fierce eyes, a tendency to control every room she stepped in. Angela didn’t say any of that, though, because somehow it lined up too well with a few of O’Deorain’s traits. “She’s tenacious, you could say.”

“So she gets what she wants?”

“That’s fair, yes. But she also respects when she’s been bested.”

“And what do you think she wants, exactly?”

Angela frowned. Was O’Deorain trying to trick her again? Gingerly and unsure she answered, “A business transaction, sir? What do _you_ think she wants?”

O’Deorain waved her hand vaguely, as though Angela had asked something inane and silly rather than parroting her own question back at her. “Nothing. Never mind me.”

She wasn’t getting any more than that, that much was clear. So Angela huffed, smiled. “Don’t be so worried, sir. That’s why I’m here, to buffer the blows and keep her receptive.”

O’Deorain’s grip flexed on the wheel. A small part of Angela wondered if that was exactly what she was worried about, but she ushered that thought away, as quickly as it came.

~

Overwatch HQ was an orange shimmering line that cut up into the morning sky and mirrored the dawn’s sunlight back into the world, which Angela found, was strangely metaphoric for what the company stood for. It was nestled in the heart of the city and beside her O’Deorain muttered angrily in her mother tongue -- too quietly for Angela to hear properly -- when people strolled languidly in front of the hood of her car and across the street.

“I hate this part of town,” she reaffirmed in English, as though Angela didn’t understand the nuance of her sour tone before.

“It’s a whole other lifestyle over here.” Angela grinned up at her, and she caught it, even if the sun was dancing on the lenses of her glasses and obscuring her eyes. “Maybe it’s the change you need to lighten yourself up, de-stress a little.”

“Definitely not, but thanks for the suggestion.”

“I have more where that came from.” Did that sound flirty? Too flirty? Angela hadn’t even thought before she’d opened her mouth.

But O’Deorain didn’t seem to catch it or at least, pretended she didn’t. “I’ll thank you to keep them to yourself.” She turned them into a narrow driveway, which led into an underground carpark. She wound down the window so she could press a button on the intercom, and Angela watched with a fuzzy feeling clogging her chest as she simply reached out with a long arm, pressed it with an elegant finger, and collected the paper card it spat out. Angela always had to practically crawl out of the car via window and hang by her waist in order to reach the ticket machine at the city’s malls, and she always caused a scene.

The carpark was split into visitors and employees and O’Deorain rolled them along at a painfully dozy speed as she craned her neck and peered out for empty parks. She found one eventually, surprisingly close to the elevators, and chuffed with herself she parked neatly, spinning the steering wheel with the palms of her hands.

“And we’re here,” she sighed. The clock on the dashboard read seven fifty-two. “With time to spare.”

“What can you possibly hope to get done in eight minutes?”

O’Deorain flashed her a grin as she extracted herself from the car. “Wouldn’t you like to know.”

Like this, O'Deorain was different. Angela thought, it wasn't as though she were uncaged, or unrestricted, she'd just turned... fluid. She moved against Angela like a breeze rather than the barrage she normally built up. It was a fractured piece of O'Deorain that wasn't jagged and that Angela had not yet been privy to. It was endearing. It made a warm little bubble swell between her left and right ribcage until it popped, and warmth trickled down her, all the way down to where her toes had gone cold in her stockings.

 _No,_ a teeny voice said behind her left ear.  _No no no no no._

Angela’s bones popped when she ejected herself from the car and she stretched, and after she enjoyed the moment and suffocated her brain she fixed her collar and ran her hands down her skirt, ruffling the pleats til she was satisfied with them. When she straightened O’Deorain was watching her, with an expression on her face Angela was sure she wasn’t meant to see. It was something not unlike the note to her voice she heard that morning in the breakroom. So she looked away again, told herself _no_ again, smoothed down the buttons on her blazer instead of meeting O’Deorain head-on. When she looked up O’Deorain was turned, and shrugging into her jacket.

“No,” Angela found herself calling. O'Deorain frowned back at her, and Angela winced. "No, I mean, hold on." Her heels clipped against the cement floor and the sound bounced around them and through the carpark. “You can’t go in like that: your shirt’s all a mess.”

O’Deorain merely blinked as Angela came to her and assessed the situation, bringing her hands to her shirt and untucking it gently. She was right; O’Deorian’s thermal _was_ tucked into her trousers, and Angela took delicate care not to pull it up and muss her further. Above her O’Deorain made a sound when she pried her buttons apart, up to her midrift where the blunder was. Angela fixed the buttons, went down, and before she thought about it, before she stepped back and out of O’Deorain’s very tiny and very compelling personal space, slipped her fingers into her waistband, along with the shirt.

Her fingers grazed the striking shells of her hip bones, the strong muscle of her abdomen. Angela pretended that her breath didn't hitch, and prayed O'Deorain didn't hear it.

“There,” she piped, an attempt at normalcy, “you’re all fixed now.” She smoothed her hand down the front of O’Deorain’s shirt for good measure. The tips of her fingers parsed over her small bust, barely there but Angela felt her, and it sent something dangerously addictive swirling in her head.

“Thank you, Angela.” O’Deorain’s voice was quiet. Her eyes, one the colour of wine, the other the colour of hydrangeas, were settled down on Angela like she wasn’t real. As though she were some dream O’Deorain was about to lose through her fingers.

This was normal, Angela told herself. Women preened each other all the time, in shared bathrooms and in office spaces. Even strangers did this for one another. It was a girls-helping-girls thing. This wasn’t any different. O’Deorain and her were practically strangers; they shared an office floor and seldom else.

 _Save for a common interest in a certain lifestyle and sexual preference,_ that tired-sounding voice reminded her. Angela purposefully leant downwards when she retrieved her briefcase from the back of the car, if only so O’Deorian wouldn’t spy the way her face went hot and her hands trembled.

This time of the morning they took the lift alone together and Angela took the opportunity to go over how she looked. She’d never consider herself a vain woman, but she liked makeup, and clothes, and she liked looking nice for important business occasions; especially when they involved her old mentor. O’Deorain snorted beside her as she watched. Angela frowned and ignored her, tucking a curled tress of hair behind her ear and reapplying her pink lipstick.

“You never dove into the details of your relationship with Amari,” O’Deorain said conversationally, as though she were simply remarking on beautiful weather for the season, or a scandalous current news event.

“Should I have?” Angela quickly hunted through her handbag for her little vial of oil -- lavender, pure -- and dabbed it behind her ears, on the soft pale undersides of her wrists where her veins were blue and stark against her skin.

O’Deorain made a noise that somehow sounded both defensive and unbothered, and Angela could feel her watching her. She heard the soft, wet sound of her opening her mouth, and braced herself for whatever O’Deorain was about to say, only the elevator jolted to a stop and the doors slid open with  hydraulic hiss, and suddenly, they were delivered to the lobby of Overwatch HQ.

“Well,” O’Deorain began tartly, and Angela caught her throwing a sly glance around. “It doesn’t look like it’s going to fall apart any time soon.”

And it didn’t. The floors were glistening and freshly waxed, the ceiling of the lobby was high above their heads and carved along the skirting. Everything was white and wood and the walls were hung with blown-up portraits of notable members of the company, and of the cities they’d saved. Angela recognised a photo of a man standing tall in a blue uniform -- an ex-member of some soldier program she’d heard rumours about. He wasn't smiling, but he looked happy. Angela hoped he still was.

On the wall opposite was a portrait she didn’t recognise, because it was recent. Ana Amari watched down at them as they idled, and Angela realised with a stone in her belly that her chest still went tight at the sight of her. Her jet hair was pulled back off of her face and into a tidy ponytail, which ran like cord over the shoulder of her navy blazer and down her chest. Her buttons were undone at the collar but not low enough to forgo modesty, and Angela traced the column of her throat to her face, chasing every bit of olive skin she was offered

Her smile was still the same, still tight-lipped and subtle, only now it was bracketed by sparse lines that betrayed her age. Her nose was still strong, as was her brow, and her high cheekbones. But her eyes were gentle, placid; beneath the left was a very thin and well disguised scar but Angela spied it, and frowned. It ran downwards, and ended just before her cheek.

“Come on.” O’Deorain’s voice was flat beside her. She sounded calm. She was fronting. “We’ll check in.”

The building was quiet at this time of the morning, with only a handful of people shunting through the grand glass doors at the southern end of the lobby and spilling from the lifts behind them. Angela pulled out a polite enough smile for anyone who happened to catch her eye; she doubted O’Deorain was doing the same, but it hardly mattered. Her strides were long and quick and Angela couldn’t pay too much attention to anything else -- like her expression, or the impression she was giving people as the ex-scientist turned head medical sales representative of Watchpoint, or her face in general -- lest she fall behind.

“Good morning,” O’Deorain managed well enough, and Angela noted with a surprised noise that the receptionist didn’t immediately wither beneath her gaze. He looked too young, and too happy to help at this time in the morning, even if his cheerful demeanour was fastly wilting. Angela suspected he was interning. “We’re Ziegler and O’Deorain, from Watchpoint Futuristics. We’re to meet with Dr. Amari this morning.”

“Of course.” Angela watched as his smile shook at the edges, and he scrambled for his keyboard. “Please, take a seat. I’ll let her know that you’ve arrived.”

O’Deorain let her pick where they sat, which happened to be one of the long oak benches pressed to the wall, but closest to the elevators Angela assumed where for agents and Overwatch personnel. She kept her knees and her heels together, sat straight with her hands in her lap, and she pretended like her attention was absolutely captured by a plethora of brochures all sheathed in a rack beside the front desk. O’Deorain snorted beside her and took her seat, and it was only when she reached over for Angela’s briefcase that she realised O’Deorain was sitting so close beside her that their thighs were just touching.

Just touching. Just enough. Slyly she glanced down, and for a stolen second marvelled at just how much larger O’Deorain’s leg was compared to hers. _No,_ she yelled, when her heart did a stupid little thing inside her. Angela's knees barely breached past the middle of the woman’s thighs; Angela knew she was massive, knew even before she shared a car with her, but there was a disconnect between what she imagined in her fantasies and what was actuality. Angela’s brow pinched, because she was never one to allow for errors.

“So are you going to do the talking?” O’Deorain eventually prodded. Angela’s hand twitched; it would be so easy to simply reach out and let it sit high up on O’Deorain’s leg, innocent and innocuous. If they were lovers she could, and it wouldn’t be strange. Not to her, not to O’Deorain, nor anyone who saw them together.

Angela shoved her hand beneath her own leg, and smiled. “How about you do the talking, and I roll in with the bandages when you inevitably say the wrong thing?”

“That never happens.”

“Except for when you’re tired.”

“I’m always--” O’Deorain cleared her throat. Her hands were fidgeting, and she played with the buttons on her cuffs, til Angela worried that in her antsiness she’d pull the threads holding everything together loose. She gently eased her hand out from her leg, to settle over O’Deorain’s wrist, stilling it. Calming her. “I’m always tired, Angela.”

“I know.” She wasn’t resentful, and she didn’t sound mad. It was just a statement. As true as if O’Deorain had said she had red hair, or that she was a woman, or that she was Irish. “Perhaps it wouldn’t be such a bad idea to stay at home this weekend instead of crawling the town with Lena and Genji?”

O’Deorain looked down at her, and her gaze slid from Angela’s face to Angela’s hands, where her fingers were gentle over her own. “And you,” she said quietly, a softness to those two little words that Angela hardly ever heard. She realised, dumbly, that it was her accent; her true accent, not the one she’d adopted now with all her time abroad. “You’re still going out, too?”

Her mouth was dry. She found herself laughing, though not from humor. Nerves, Angela thought, and then wondered just what exactly did she have to be nervous about. “Why don’t we just run off together to go to bed and tell everyone we had the night of our lives, drinking and dancing while we were actually getting some much needed rest?”

“Oh,” O’Deorain chuckled, and there was something familiar about that, but then she was smiling down at her, really smiling, the first Angela had seen in a long time, and most rational thought trickled from her mind out her ear and onto the lovely marble floor, probably to be mopped away by a janitor later on. “So you want to tell people we slept together?”

The blush was sudden and hot and all over her face. Angela looked away and made a strange noise she wished she could have swallowed instead, and all she could feel was the way her heart thumped so heavily in her chest she feared it would burst right out and onto her lap. the way O’Deorain sat next to her wasn't helping, smugness rolling from her in waves. “Funny,” Angela tried, her as tone flat as she could manage. She didn’t know what to say, other than that, and the silence stretched too long for Angela to make a swift recovery. She let them sit in strange quiet, that was suddenly so much thicker than whenever they were alone in the office floor after hours, or even in the car this morning. O’Deorain wasn’t even exuding the aloof, uncaring aura she always wore, the one that made it known that it never mattered what others thought, because she didn’t have time for them. That, when they were arguing, always served as a reminder to Angela that her opinion, or Angela’s feelings, meant nothing.

So it had to mean something, right, or was she simply projecting?

Was it another one of O’Deorain’s tests, but this one came without torment?

She wasn’t even saying anything, either, to bring the conversation back to somewhere on the spectrum of acceptable, of normalcy. Every second that petered out felt like an entire day passing. And the longer Angela left her hand atop O’Deorain’s, the more she realised just how hard O’Deorain was breathing beside her.

Across the lobby a little blue triangle pinged over the elevator, and just as the doors began to slide open, and just as Dr. Ana Amari stepped out, Angela stood up, keeping her right hand curled behind her back.


	6. An Envying

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you everyone for being patient with this chapter! I had a few irl dramas come up but fingers crossed everything stays on track <3 Thank you for the support!

For the first time in a very, _very_ long time, Angela’s entire world stood completely still. There were no meetings. There was no email that had been sent out twice. There was no Sir, and no Talon; just the little patch of world beneath Angela’s shoes, solid and sturdy and bracing.

For a second there was only silence, punctuated by the clippling of Ana’s heeled boots. All the wetness and the words in her mouth fizzled away as she watched Ana step from the elevator and strut over to where they were standing. Beside her, O’Deorain had gone still, but Angela didn’t have the time nor the presence of mind to decipher it just yet.

Ana’s voice was warm like cinnamon and sounded exactly how she remembered it. “Angela, _habiti,_ ” she welcomed, and when she stretched her arms out Angela stepped forward to meet her embrace as if on instinct.

She smelt like lavender and cloves. The cashmere of her shirt was soft under her cheek, and her collar bone beneath was grounding. Angela pressed her face to it. “So good to see you again, Angela,” Ana continued, and held her out at arms length, taking her in. Angela’s head was fuzzy, and she hoped she didn’t look too dazed when she smiled.

“It’s been too long,” she managed, pretending she wasn’t heating up under Ana’s scrutiny. “I should have called, or visited--”

“Nonsense,” Ana quipped, but she was smiling, and Angela felt safe. “You’re doing well. You’re _busy,_ I hear.”

Reservation was something that came easily to Angela, and she shrugged the compliment away. “There never seems to be enough hours in one day. We’ve all been doubling down at Watchpoint, lately.” That wasn’t entirely true, though. She could see Lena, Genji, and Jesse all piling into the elevator come half-five every afternoon, busting to be done with the day; but their work was only a fraction of the size of what she and O’Deorain were piled up to the gills with.

“It’s not everyday that you make the technological breakthrough of the century.” Ana’s smile left her, then, sliding to her right and up to where Angela had forgotten her partner was standing. She bit the inside of her cheek, to keep her face neutral, and to remind herself that Ana’s attention wasn’t a prize to be won. At least, not anymore it wasn't. 

“Dr O’Deorain,” Ana greeted, taking another step of her space and stretching her strong arm out to take O’Deorain’s hand.

“Please,” Angela heard her laugh, a breathy, awkward thing, “it’s Ms, nowadays.” She watched them shake, and ignored her mind when it took her to dark, Chateau Guillard-shaped places.

“Of course.” Ana’s smile never flickered. Angela wondered if O’Deorain’s had. Or if she’d even tried smiling at all. “You must be very proud of all the work your scientists are making.”

Angela knew Ana wasn’t being cruel. She knew her words weren’t weapons. But she also knew that O’Deorain definitely felt a blow, whether it was intended or simply her own insecurities overcompensating. She had stiffened beside her, Angela knew that. She just _knew._ But Ana, in usual fashion, didn’t give her time to recover.

“Come, I’ll give you the tour, since you came all this way.”

The elevator was larger than Angela was ready for, and while she’d looked at it from the outside and assumed it was just plain steel, from the inside it appeared to be made of blacked-glass, offering a perfect, if a little dark, view of the lobby. Inside was spacious but she stood close beside O’Deorain anyway, and watched Ana key in the level before pressing the pad of her index finger to a small scanner beside the door. The elevator was gentle and hissed as it went up, and the agents milling around on the floor grew smaller and smaller, the further they climbed.

“Our teams have mastered the medicines, the Mark I biopods, the micro-sized intravenous transfusion  _bugs_  medics are using out in war zones today,” Ana began, eyes alight, and Angela tore her gaze from the side of the lift to face her. “Using primarily your research in the field, Ms O’Deorain, we’ve found a way to harness adrenaline and provide it in doses for added performance in our field agents. But nothing in our archive comes close to what I’ve heard of your latest tech.”

When they hit the floor Ana stepped out first and she looked back at them, at Angela, as she took in the vast hallways the spacious, pristine laboratories stemming off of them. It was multitudes larger than Watchpoint’s “downstairs” -- Angela couldn’t keep the dazed look off of her face. O’Deorain merely glanced and sniffed.

“Incredible the funding you can get these days when you’re military.” Ana shot a wink Angela’s way.

“I never thought I’d ever see a lab where there wasn’t three people shackled together at one exam table,” Angela laughed.

Ana’s smile was comforting, familiar. It warmed Angela from the inside, until Angela had to look somewhere else. “We’ve also dedicated a team solely towards cybernetics and prosthesis. Using a similar medium to hard light technologies--”

“I thought ‘hard light’ was Vishkar’s little invention.” O’Deorain’s voice was dry, and Angela couldn’t spy her expression but she saw Ana’s, and while the smile still hung off her lips so did a stiffness, a pinch of annoyance.

“We must adapt and overcome in this world we’re in, Ms O’Deorain. It wouldn’t do well to fall behind.” The two women looked at each other for a moment longer, before Ana’s eyes fell back down to Angela, and she realised that she’d been holding her breath. “I’ll admit, we haven’t mastered the final product, but it is still one of our most prided achievements.”

“And the cost?” Angela asked lightly, as though it had little weight on her mind, even though she felt it crushing her.

“Our prosthetics are intended for _everyone,_ ” Ana assured, “we sell at a fraction of the cost of what Vishkar ask. It doesn’t do well to trade human beings their livelihoods for their lives. And sadly, that is the state of the world we are in today.”

“The world will always have room for change,” O’Deorain rebuffed.

Ana was unfazed. She always was. The building could be crumbling down around them and she’d still be smiling. “My colleagues and I want to ensure that it does.”

The scientists in the laboratories paid them no mind as Ana lead them through the labyrinthine corridors. Equipment and prototypes that could change the world were stacked on tables. The shell of what looked like some kind of lightweight rifle was perched on a stand and kept under the scrutiny of one of its creators, but before Angela could confirm that they only made medical gear, not weapons, Ana was off on another tangent, and Angela thought nothing else of it.

And how could she when Ana’s voice sounded like that? Angela could have listened to her for years. She explained how their tech worked, how they’d found a way to manipular solar and hydro energies to power their equipment in order to suit missions of every climate in any part of the world. She even showed them Overwatch’s latest invention, a type of gauze that was near indestructible and would not peel off of a wound without a certain, harmless solution before it had even been released publicly or to the leading chemist chains. It was all incredible. It was all what Angela could have had if she hadn’t jumped onto a different pathway in life.

She'd have had her own laboratory. Working for an organisation fixed on doing good in the world.

She could have kept Ana.

O’Deorain spoke little on the tour, which Angela initially thought was just her usual, standoffish behaviour. But by the end, when they were back at the elevator and Ana was herding them in, she realised it was a tactic. All the questions O'Deorain asked were small, ten-word or less things, that prompted Ana to speak more to fill the silence. As they ascended to Ana’s office, Angela realised it was no doubt in order for O’Deorain to catch her out in one of her stories. She was digging for intel, but not on the status of their healthcare services; she was sniffing around for the fall out, to see just how sturdy Overwatch HQ still stood.  
  
That was completely unfair. Overwatch wasn’t Watchpoint’s enemy, but Angela didn’t understand why O’Deorain hadn’t seemed to grasp that, yet. They were here to mitigate a business transaction, for heaven’s sake. It was clear and awkward and stifling just how distrustful O’Deorain felt, as though she were holding a very long and very sharp, pointed thing between herself and Ana.

Any other time it would have been a funny idea to entertain, Ana and O’Deorain going at it, but Angela couldn’t help the slight frown on her brow. When Ana remarked on it, Angela laughed it away, and that only seemed to add more spikes to O’Deorain’s mood.

The upper floors consisted of more corridors and rooms, only these ones were constructed of hard, shiny wood and warm walls, orange lights. Plants sat on stools in the corners, all different and glamorous and exotic, and portraits of people that Angela didn’t recognise without name plaques lined the walls. There was a landscape photo of a city Overwatch had defended from complete destruction, and Angela recalled reading an article that had used the same image. It was Cairo, the first city Ana saved, alongside her daughter.

“Here we are,” Ana quipped, pressing her hand to a pad that tinged as it accepted her. The door to her office was glass and it slid open for them quietly. The room was spacious and Angela would say luxuriant, only because she knew Ana, and knew from where she’d risen from. It was twice as large as O’Deorain’s office and offered a high-rise view of the city from the massive floor-to-ceiling windows, without curtains or blinds. Her desk was large and L-shaped, and on the walls hung ferns and desert plants and numerous accolades Ana had received over the years. “Please, make yourselves comfortable.”

Angela certainly didn’t feel relaxed. Welcomed, but not by any means comfortable, and she was familiar with Ana. Angela could only imagine how O’Deorain felt. For the first time since they were in the lobby Angela looked up at her, properly, and felt something pinch in her chest. O'Deorain's vision was tunnelled and focused on the smallest point in the room, which was probably the wall socket hidden slyly beside one end of the desk. Carefully, Angela brushed her fingers against the wrist of O’Deorain’s button-up, where the cuff was tight and pressing into her pale skin. The touch was so faint Angela was positive she wouldn’t even feel it, wouldn’t notice, and she’d continue to spiral down into her strange cocktail of anxiety and envy.

But O’Deorain flinched. Her fingers twitched where they dangled limply by her thigh, and when she looked down at Angela her eyes were relieved behind her glasses. She looked at Angela like she’d forgotten she was there, the entire time. Like she was the one and only grounding thing in her life at that moment.

So Angela gave her a smile, and not-so-accidentally knocked their arms together as she moved forward and placed the briefcase on Ana’s desk, before taking her seat, and O’Deorain came back to her.  
  
O'Deorain cleared her throat. When she came to sit beside Angela she rested her hand on the wooden top of the chair, and knowing the proximity, knowing how O'Deorain's hands looked white-knuckled and firm, just feeling her commanding presence next to her, made Angela's skin prickle in a delicious way. Her hair was slicked and her shirt was buttoned to the throat and when Angela's eyes fluttered shut, she was somewhere else, somewhere with black rubber floors, beside someone named Sir.

“It was only a matter of months ago when we first started studying biotic technologies, and from their our scientists and technicians prototyped a kind of nanite that could house ten times a dose of medicine. We coupled this with my old research into cellular breakdown and regeneration,” O’Deorain began, voice even and clean and firm, and she popped the briefcase open, and drew from it her tablet, and something warm trickled through Angela, and beneath her skin she was buzzing, “and it was then Watchpoint had its breakthrough. Dr Amari, my colleague and I would be honoured to show you the fundamentals of  just how our cellular regenerative nanite technology works. I’m sure I don’t need to embellish how beneficial this kind of science is to your medical program here at Overwatch.”

~

Angela first met O’Deorain when she was twenty-five, and just beginning the final year of her masters in chemistry before she was due to graduate. Her name had been Dr Moira O’Deorain, then, and she wore less wrinkles and a more pleasant curve to her mouth. Angela could shut her eyes and remember how she’d dressed for the night; a suit with no tie and the top buttons on her blue shirt unbuttoned. Her hair was longer then, though she still kept it back with pomade, and she wore contacts rather than spectacles. She was smiling, and shaking the hands of professors at the gala, and laughing along with her fellow alumni. The first time Angela saw her had been at a gala, at the university, and she’d looked at her like she looked at all the other people at the event: in passing, and as though the entire thing was inconsequential.

O’Deorain didn’t know her yet, so really, it didn’t count. Angela hadn’t introduced herself. It wasn’t the place. She had merely come along as a plus-one to her mentor, her friend, whose jet black hair was sleek down her spine, and kept her close at her side through the night. Not that she even wanted to stray far from Ana’s side; Angela hadn’t been to anything like this, where how she dressed, how she spoke, how she moved her body all mattered in giving off an impression.

In retrospect, the gala was probably where Angela first began to break down the locks keeping her innermost wants sealed. The narcissistic side of her creeped through the cracks, and while no one paid her much mind --  favouring, instead, her companion -- and while no one knew her name, because it meant little in the university and in her field, she had practised. And she didn’t look Moira’s way again, because there were more important things to focus on.

The second time they met, the time that really counted, was when Angela was twenty-eight and two years out of the university circles and cliques. She had a masters degree under one arm and a determination to do good under the other, both of which had meant little in her time floating around as a medicinal chemist in retail outlets, where she couldn’t alter the price of someone’s life. Most of the time the pills she sold were chalk and sugar, and rather than stewing in her frustration she resolved to change that.

Watchpoint Futuristics was not a glittering beacon of hope in the world, it had no ties to the UN. They were mentioned in faded smallprint on the cardboard boxes of their medicines, but the lack of public fawning or bolstering headlines didn’t matter to Angela.

“So what makes you think you’re suitable for the job?” O’Deorain had asked. Angela had only ever seen her once, and it was from afar, and whilst she was brandishing a flawless facade to be the scrutiny of hundreds of her peers that ultimately turned against her, anyway, a year later, but she looked so innately and entirely changed. The lady in the lobby had called her ‘Ms’ but Angela wouldn’t do that, wouldn’t denigrate her like that. She knew little of her history, but she knew multitudes of the work she had done for her title. Despite her fallings Angela couldn’t dismiss the years of her life she’d traded to be called _doctor._ She didn’t understand what exactly she’d done to lose her title, and she didn’t want to know, because Angela sought the best in everyone and she didn’t have the right to judge O’Deorain’s actions when she hadn’t even known her.

Angela smiled. “Looking past my credentials, on a moral field, I believe in the balance of all things. In any relationship, be it a friendship or a business arrangement, there should a balance of the power, a give and take. In the world today I see a lot of taking: of lives, of resources. I won’t explain how this is an unsustainable existence to you, sir; but I will stress how as a sales representative of new medicinal treatments by Watchpoint’s scientists, I will endeavour to provide healthcare and resources for all people, under the only incentive of changing this world and using Watchpoint’s name to do it.”

~

“So what makes you think that went well?” O’Deorain grunted as she fell back into her car. Her hands flew over the top few buttons of her shirt and she cocked her seat back a notch. Her glasses found themselves tossed onto the dashboard, and Angela watched for a moment as O’Deorain rubbed her sore eyes and sighed.

Then Angela deposited the briefcase in the backseat, and she leant over the other way to buckle her seatbelt.

“Well, the fact that you hadn’t thrown a tantrum and stormed off at the sight of how large her…” Angela smirked, “...office is did help your first impression. And Ana is fond of a good first impression.”

O’Deorain muttered beneath her breath. “Always you and offices.”

“I’m sorry?”

“Nothing.” The engine turned over a few times before purring to life, and O’Deorain drove them out of the parking lot and up a ramp into the light of day. The boomgate lifted for them after a pause, and then O’Deorain turned to the right, and began the arduous journey of retracing their steps back to Watchpoint. “I won’t dance around the subject for the entire trip, Angela: I’m not selling to her.”

The smile melted off of her face. Angela forgot herself completely and she gawked at O’Deorain, pulling no doubt the rudest expression one could at their boss; but at that moment, Angela didn’t particularly care. “On what grounds?”

“Do I need to have any?”

“I very well think so, yes.” Angela’s voice was tight and high, embarrassingly so, and a little part of her mind told her to sit back in the chair and say yes, sir, and get over it. But that part of her was very small and very much squashed beneath the shield of her stubbornness, which billowed and grew at an incredible speed. "Overwatch is still in one piece, which, if I remember well, was the initial source of your anxiety with this entire sale."

It tended to, around O'Deorain.

“If I do, what makes you think I have to divulge it? Do we co-dependently run Watchpoint, Angela?”

She almost said yes. She almost said yes, and a slew of other dreadful things that wouldn’t have made the ride home entirely pleasant. Angela held her tongue, though it took all her strength, and tried not to think about her late nights, her overtime-- for fuck’s sake, even this meeting she had to pull strings to arrange, and probably just lost her rapport with Ana over. Because O’Deorain was, unfortunately, right.

But while she focused all her energy on not angry-crying like a mess all over O’Deorain’s nice leather interior, she found herself asking, “Is you not wanting to sell based on whatever personal issue you hold with Ana Amari?”

“ _Do_ I hold a personal issue with Amari, Angela?” O’Deorain’s voice was easy and calm, and she spoke quietly. Like they were discussing a film after watching it, or an entree at an ocean-side restaurant. “Perhaps you’re the one who can’t get over your past.”

Angela sat back in her chair. In her fist her nails dug four little, red crescents into the soft of her palm. She didn’t have a rebuttal, and even if she did O’Deorain would simply bat it away, like unrelenting bug in her face. If she did, it wouldn’t make a difference. If this was how O’Deorain wanted to proceed, this was what Watchpoint would do. Still, it stung, and it felt like such a waste of a morning, of the last few days preparing for the meeting. Had O’Deorain decided the moment they landed in Ana’s office? The second Angela dragged her back from her ensuing panic attack?

Or did she decide that day last week in her own office, when she’d brought Angela in, and Angela had pleaded her case? 

A little voice that sounded like Lena told her that O’Deorain simply lived to watch her squirm.

Another voice, that was more rational than her own and sounded suspiciously like Genji, only if Genji had added a few four-syllable words to his vocabulary, reminded her that O’Deorain never acted on her feelings, and that she must have found something about Overwatch’s gig suspect.

It was easier to sulk than address either of those thoughts, though. Where her phone was stashed in her handbag she took it and properly looked at it for the first time all day. She had a few new emails, a subscription text from a beauty salon she went to all of once for a spray-tan with Lena two summers ago, and a text from Genji that was actually just a video clip of Jesse falling over the water cooler. That at least made her smile.

But it wasn’t long before O’Deorain spoke again, in an attempt to crack the silence. “I’m going to pick us up something for lunch,” she stated. Not a question. They weren’t going to dine in. That suited Angela just fine. “Anything you feel like in particular?”

“I’m fine, thank you.”

O’Deorain shrugged. A few minutes later she found the cafe she was looking for and pulled up in front of it, parking swiftly and leaving the car running while Angela stayed idle. She sat still for a moment, watching O’Deorain shunt into the cafe from the side mirror. When was gone Angela stepped out of the car and fumbled through her bag til she found the little carton of Malboros she kept, even though she didn’t regularly turn to them.

Now, though, was as good a time as necessary. An act to calm her angry head. An act of rebellion, if anything, too.

The lighter hissed as she thumbed at it, and when the tip of her cigarette crinkled and glowed she stowed it back in her bag, and leant against the closed door of the passenger side of the car. It had turned into a sunny day, though it wasn’t hot enough to make Angela sting where her skin was exposed. She glanced at her reflection in the car parked beside her, frowned when she spied how her curls had come loose and her makeup had shifted just so. She looked exhausted, like she always did when she wasn’t trying to put on a show for everyone around her. She thought that whatever this relationship she held with O’Deorian was balanced, but as the weeks went by and Angela never got _anything_ in return, she started to wonder if Lena had been right all along.

By the time O’Deorain resurfaced her cigarette had burnt down almost to the butt and Angela had resorted to trawling through her Facebook for entertainment. O’Deorain was toting a small paper bag over her wrist and held two cups, one of which she passed over to Angela.

She took it tentatively. It was only coffee, no doubt about it, but O’Deorain was giving it to her like it was some kind of pacifier. “I didn’t know you smoked,” she said, cocking her head in the direction of Angela’s thin hand. and it sounded a little dumb, or maybe Angela was just too tired.

“There’s a lot about me you don’t know, sir,” Angela quipped. O’Deorain merely nodded, sighed, and circled around to the driver’s side of the car. She waited for Angela to come in, but Angela took her time, sucked one final drag down and held it til her head went fuzzy and her lungs burnt, before leisurely trotting off to find the furthest waste disposal from the car. By the time she made it back to the car O’Deorain was halfway through her wrap, and the paper bag was left folded on Angela’s seat.

O'Deorain glanced at her when she got in, and Angela's stomach twisted in frustration. “I got the vegetarian, to be safe.”

“A little presumptuous.”

“I thought I always was.” There was a sarcastic bite to her words. Angela ignored it. She wasn’t going to balm O’Deorain’s wounds anymore.

When O’Deorain didn’t get a rise out of her, she sighed, and wrapped up what was left of her lunch. “I got vegetarian because you drink damn almond milk, Angela. Bloody hell.”

In an instant, Angela’s sour mood fled, and her blood ran like ice in her veins. The nicotine buzzing in her blood settled, and her heart stopped entirely. When Angela spoke she was very quiet, her voice a thin thing. She was in shock. Because O’Deorain was tired, or angry, or both, and her accent was slipping through. One more time, she just needed to hear her one more time, to put it all together and see the entire picture. Slowly she opened her mouth. Quietly, she asked, “Pardon me?”

But O’Deorain turned the radio on, and she flicked the indicator up before taking off into the city once more, and loosed a heavy breath from her lungs. Moments passed, Angela's mind chanted  _no, no, no._ And O'Deorain calmed herself down. Her voice sounded the same as it always did. “Nothing, Angela. We should be home soon. You can take the rest of the day off when we get back, if you’d like.” 


	7. An Admission

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is for everyone who continuously refresh this fic for updates <3 Thank you, thank you, thank you!

Chateau Guillard was a nondescript building tucked between a casual pub and a pet-store, and far enough away from Angela’s real life for her to comfortably venture to without the threat of being recognised lingering over her. As far as she knew it was the only fetish bar in the city, and she was careful not to follow any of the club’s social medias with her own public account when checking upcoming events. Chateau Guillard catered to everyone; from running rigging classes and workshops from beginners to expert, to hosting special interests nights that brought out niche pockets of the community. Every month, there was a social night for people to mix. Doms, subs, littles, pups, everyone; Angela never went to those. 

But she was here tonight, staring at the whorls in the wood of the bar and wishing she could be sucked into a different dimension, where her life didn’t continuously twist itself into knots over and over.

The vodka soda she was drinking had gone flat by her wrist, and her phone battery was dwindling down by the minute. Wednesday night was tame enough even for the likes of this kind of club, and people milled around in the booths and at the bar, which was elevated by a few steps from a clearing for the dance floor to Angela’s right. It was empty, even though there was a determined kid up on the stage relentlessly manning the DJ booth. Angela didn’t think she knew the song, and she was too tired to really listen. 

She should have left hours ago. The only thing she’d had to eat today was the late lunch O’Deorain bought her, and there was still a mountain of work to sort through at home. As well as a thank-you message to pen and send to Ana, before O’Deorain could wield the wounding blow. Angela doubted she’d still hold her standing with Amari after that came, whether she sucked up to her or not. 

Angela groaned and slumped forward onto her arms. She flicked through Facebook with a bored finger, more distracting herself from all the stupid situations she’d tripped herself into this last week than looking at anything enriching or of merit. An email came through but Angela swiped it away, barely registering that it was from O’Deorain before it flew from the screen. She wished she hadn’t read her name at all, or felt the stupid hiccup her chest did. Frustration beneath her skin sizzled angrily and to extinguish it, Angela downed the rest of her drink. 

It always came back to O’Deorain. Always. And it wasn’t healthy. Angela stared at the air bubbles trapped in the base of the glass, tiny and frozen, and felt suffocated, too. Perhaps she should start looking for another job, or even jump to Overwatch before O’Deorain burned all her bridges for her. But Angela’s eyes stung, because it just wasn’t that easy. 

Nothing was. And where other people could fall into a support network of friends, or family, or a lover, Angela had no one. 

“Going again?” the bartender asked, smiling, and Angela blinked dumbly up at her, wondering if she was entirely real. In the soft, orange light she didn't look human, and the way her white hair and red eyes glittered didn’t help but lend to the illusion of something fantastic. She eventually huffed and threw her tea towel over her shoulder, when Angela opened her mouth and no words came out. And when she leaned in close to clear Angela’s glass, closer than she really needed to, Angela could smell cigarettes and something heady like warmed wood on her.   

“I’ll take another one, please,” Angela squeaked when the woman leaned back. Her lipstick was so red it looked like it burnt, and when she smirked Angela felt like she was being stripped back, layer by layer.

“You sure you’re not over, sugar?” 

“Positive.” 

Another glass came up from the fridge. Angela watched as the bartender fixed the shot, and flinched when she pressed down on the trigger of the tap and her nails glistened in the lowlight. Carbonated water shot from the hose and swilled in the glass as it filled, bubbles chasing each other and racing to the surface. Before it could get awkward Angela pulled a ten from her purse and slid it over the counter. She got another one of those sharp smiles, along with her change, and then the bartender turned to someone else sulking a few chairs away, and left her all alone again. 

Perhaps she was desperate. The sliver of time that the bartender had given her filled Angela up in a stupid way, a way she hated and craved all at once, and now that it was used Angela felt wrung dry. She tapped her phone, pursed her lips. Quickly she glanced around, and when she saw the empty booth on the other side of the floor, tucked beneath a window and shady enough, she folded and walked the distance to it with her drink, only to fall into it. 

Always this. This easy thing. Angela felt like she might need an intervention of some kind. It wasn’t right to be this desperately dependent. 

The leather seat was clean and didn’t smell like beer or lube, which was one of the perks of the Chateau, and Angela settled against the wall. The red velvet curtain over the window was a little cliche, but it was soft and didn’t smell dusty. When she settled against it she pulled her hair out of its bun and messy curls trickled over her shirt. When she was comfortable enough, she sipped her drink and unlocked her phone with an easy thumb. 

By now she’d saved the number, but not under an identifying name. Not that anyone would ever get the chance to -- or even want to -- trawl through her contacts for any reason. It made her feel safer about this all, though, because heaven forbid anyone find out, especially at the office. 

Imagine if O’Deorain knew she was ignoring her very important email to be doing this.

If anything, the thought of being so rebellious spurred her on, and smiling to herself, with her heeled foot jittering, Angela pressed the little call button, and listened to the line connect. 

It was the lady this time again. She sounded vague when she answered, as though distracted, but still put on the whole sexline act well enough. “Thank you for calling Talon, which service can I direct you to?” 

“Hi, I was just wondering if the Irish woman in Dom/sub was taking calls tonight?” 

She felt pleasantly fuzzy, and a little sleepy, but eagerly waited for the lady to check the lines and hum in approval. “Yeah, Red’s free right now. Do you have your card details on hand?” 

Her bank statement must have looked a mess. By now Angela knew her number off by heart, and before the minute was up the call was switched over.

Angela let her eyes slide shut as she listened to the line ringing, over and over, and she wasn’t anxious, or nervous; she felt calm. As though she were sinking into a hot bath in the middle of winter, or climbing into a bed with freshly made sheets. 

Safe. Comfortable. 

When the line clicked, she smiled like Sir might see it. 

“Thank you for calling Talon this evening. Who do I have the pleasure of keeping the company of tonight?” 

“You can’t guess, Sir?” 

Sir made a breathy sound, and even though her world was foggy, Angela caught the way her tone changed. Her accent stayed firm but the put-on lilt dissipated, to let in familiarity. 

“Mercy,” Sir almost sounded relieved, “what’s brought you to me this time?” 

“What always prompts me to call?” 

Sir laughed quietly. “Biological habits, I should think. It’s why anyone calls.”

“You say that like you wish people called you for social reasons.” 

“Perhaps I wouldn’t mind a little socialising now and then.”

“But that opens up the door to have conversations that are boring as all hell. Some people are insufferable, and that’s even before opinions get involved.” 

Sir’s voice was warm, smiling. Angela leant into the phone. “So how do you suppose I avoid those kinds of people, Mercy?”

“Me,” Angela said, without thinking, and when she did think, she hardly cared. “You can only socialise with me.”

“Are you a good conversationalist?”

Angela held up her hand, as if Sir could see it, and shrugged. “Here we are, aren’t we?” 

“I never knew you were funny,” Sir murmured. It should have caught in Angela’s mind then, as an errant thought like the end of a loose thread, but it didn’t. Angela was tired. Angela was tipsy. Something in her chest glowed at the way Sir spoke to her, as if she were special, in a tone reserved only for her, even though she had no way of knowing if it truly was. And because of that she missed it, the little slip up, the clue. And the scales tipped a bit further. 

“You probably know more about me than anyone else does in my life, to be honest.” Angela slumped into the booth more, burrowing into her coat and playing with the rim of her glass. “No one knows I’m— well, submissive  _ tendencies _ is what I like to say.” 

“Are you out, in general?” 

Angela thought for a second. “I am, but I haven’t told many people. Simply because I don’t broadcast it. If people figure it out, good on them.” 

“Is it difficult in your personal life to be out?” 

“Not at all. In fact, my workplace is pretty diverse.” Angela sipped her drink, then laughed. “That was a deep question.” 

Sir sounded awkward, which was unusual, but not unfamiliar, and though Angela tried to pick up the thought and turn it over, it was jelly-shaped and slipped through her fingers. Her sloppy mind let it go. “I only ask because a few of Talon’s clients unfortunately have to remain closeted in their real life. Kink, and sexuality wise.”

It was a grim reality. “I don’t think I could live untrue like that for long, even if I had to.”

“Well, you keep your lifestyle under wraps, yes?”

Angela made a noise, found somewhere between a laugh and a groan. “That’s different. But I mean. I might, sort of, perhaps, be… out in a club, right now.”

Angela couldn’t see Sir, and she couldn’t quite hear her breathing what with the DJ’s bone-shake efforts, but she felt the shift — as subtle as the buttoning of a collar, of a smile dropping from a mouth. When Sir spoke there was something to it, grounding, tethering. Binding. “Mercy, are you drunk?”

Angela felt dizzy, but not from the alcohol. She put down her drink as though Sir could see her, as though she were being reprimanded. “Just a little.”

“Are you safe? I can have a cab get you home.”

For as concerned as Sir sounded, Angela felt her belly melting. She shouldn’t have enjoyed the unfiltered note of protectiveness that clung to Sir’s voice, but she couldn’t help it. Biological habits, Angela recalled Sir saying. Angela went malleable. 

“I’m okay, I’ve only had a few. I’m not at a shady club, or anything.”

Sir spoke so quickly. “Where are you?” 

Angela hesitated. Even with her head foggy, she knew she was wading into a different territory now. But in the time it took for her to reason with herself, she was already saying, “I’m at the Chateau Guillard, actually,” and hardly regretting it. 

It was a big enough city. 

“Oh,” Sir started, surprise cutting through the severity of her tone. She was quiet as she chewed her words. Angela shut her eyes and waited. “That isn’t too far. I could pick you up if you weren’t comfortable with a taxi.” 

It was a big enough city, with enough people, enough different faces to hide amongst.

Angela laughed through her teeth, and took another sip. “I don’t think I could tell the difference between you and a cab driver, honestly, Sir. And I don’t think you’d be able to pick me from the crowd.” 

Silence followed. So much silence followed that Angela had almost finished her drink before she realised that Sir hadn’t responded, and that she was even still on the phone to her. That she was paying for the quiet, which was heavy, and confused, and brimming with questions that weren’t going to be asked and weren’t going to be answered.

“Sorry,” Sir eventually decided on. “I thought you-- I simply-- forgot.” 

Angela hummed. She drew patterns on the condensation on her glass with her thumb. “I get it. You’re quite easy to talk to, you know. It’s familiar, even though we don’t know each other in real life. No wonder you get so many repeat offenders.” 

Another silence. The squashed wedge of lime and the semi-melted ice cubes turned into mush at the bottom of Angela’s glass. She looked up and around, blinking the sleepiness from her eyes, and watched people. The woman at the bar. The friends milling around at some of the tables together. The clients going in and leaving from the large, wooden double doors to the left of the bar, which lead upstairs.

The opposite side of the booth, which admittedly, she'd forgotten was empty. 

“Are you alright, Sir?” Angela waggled her eyebrows the best she could in her dozy state, even though no one was looking. “Would you like me to take the reins tonight?”

“Sorry,” Sir interjected. “Sorry, Mercy. I had a big day today. It’s unprofessional of me to let it bleed into my time with you.” 

“Not at all.” Angela smiled. She looked out at the empty seat opposite her. “I really meant it when I said I just wanted to chat. Especially with you.” 

“So no ‘taking the reins’?” 

“I mean, it  _ is  _ the Chateau. I’m positive I wouldn’t be the first person to stow myself away in a booth and have public phone sex.”

“The exhibitionist is back, I see.”

Angela made a noise. “Perhaps in theory. I don’t really want to get a life ban from the one club I enjoy.” 

“You frequent Chateau Guillard?” 

The next noise came awkwardly, the aural equivalent of wearing socks and stepping onto a wet floor. “In… theory. I like to keep my anonymity when I do make it here, and even that doesn’t always happen. Unfortunately.” 

“I know what you mean. A few of my friends work there, actually. The few that know about and openly and loudly like to deliberate on my night job.”

Angela looked around again. Hardly anyone was working the floor, be it dancing on the podiums or providing drinks at the bar. With a strange curl in her belly, Angela realised that Sir’s  _ friends  _ no doubt lingered upstairs, in the private rooms. Then she wondered if Sir also worked upstairs on occasion, and a delightful little pinch traveled up her spine from between her thighs.  

“You’re not falling asleep on me, Mercy?” Sir huffed. Angela made a light noise in response, sat up a little straighter.

“No, Sir. But I probably should get home soon, anyway.” Try as she might to forget it, work still waited for her in the morning, and all the ensuing entanglements that wove their way onto the floor in the afternoon when Angela wasn’t there. O’Deorain still waited for her, no matter how she tried to distract herself. 

“I can pay for a cab, if you’d like.” 

It was a nice offer. Sir was a nice idea. But she couldn’t be real in Angela’s life; Angela just didn’t have the right-shaped hole for her to fill. 

“Thank you, Sir. I truly appreciate the it, but I’ll be okay.” Angela laughed quietly, leant into the phone and shut her eyes and imagined the voice on the line was only as far as the width of the table. “This isn’t the first time I’ve been caught at the pub on a weekday night.” 

“Should I be more worried about you?”

“You worry about me in the first place?”

“Oh, look at that,” Sir said happily, “you've been on the line for half an hour."   
  
“You’re avoiding the question!”

“Thank you for calling Talon,” Sir continued, and her voice was higher than it was normally pitched, and lighter. More casual. “I hope you call again soon.” 

“Do you, now?”

Angela could hear Sir’s breath on the line. She tried to imagine what her expression might be, but couldn’t picture a face that wasn’t something like O’Deorain’s, and Angela didn’t really want to unpack that, there at the club. 

“I always hope it’s you calling, Mercy.” 

Part of her fluttered and melted and soared. Another part of her went nervous, and she said, a little desperately, “You must say that to all the girls, Sir.” 

Sir gave her another peculiar silence to sit on, until the anxious part of her mind took over and Angela had to clear her throat to puncture the quiet. Then she said, in lieu of a reply, “I hope you enjoy the rest of your night, Mercy. Thank you for calling Talon. I hope you got what you wanted from my service.”

Angela ended the call. The words rattled around in her head, louder than the DJ and the bass-heavy music making the table shiver. Louder than all the muddled, blurred conversations around her swirling into one great voice. She stared at her screen so long her vision merged, and the more she thought about it, the more her chest swelled and pinched and hurt. 

_ No. No, no, no.  _ She wasn’t this desperate.

She wasn’t so starved of affection that she should fall for a  _ sexline operator.  _

It didn’t mean something. 

She was only projecting. 

When Angela collected herself, she stood and swiftly fled the booth. On her way towards the exit she left her glass on the bar, but didn’t look to see if the bartender thanked her. Beelining was what she intended to do, but just as she reached the exit, and just as she shunted her bag over her shoulder and went to leave, the large double wood doors to her right opened outwards, and above the noise of the music and the patrons, Angela thought she might have heard her name.

But she didn’t look up. She chose the safe option, as always, and left, instead.

~

The office floor was suspiciously calm come Thursday morning, and without worrying why that was exactly, Angela welcomed it. She expected to be poked about why she was strolling in a good hour later than she normally arrived, but no one brought it up. Not even Lena, when Angela fell into her cubical and gave a lazy wave to her neighbour. 

Lena smiled, and rolled across the aisle to deliver a takeaway tub of breakfast to her. 

“It’s bircher,” Lena explained, and Angela didn’t bother bringing up that she didn’t know what that was, exactly, but she supposed it was edible and that was all she needed to know. Angela left it next to her laptop, which was fully charged when she opened it. Funny, Angela thought, lips pouted in thought. She didn’t remember putting it on charge yesterday morning, before she left with--  
  
With O’Deorain. 

Ah.

Right. 

Angela looked up, and glanced at the darkened office on the other side of the floor. Lena shot her another smile when Angela looked back, but this one was wobbly at the edges and fleeting. That said enough about the state the floor was in yesterday, when O’Deorain returned and Angela didn’t.

“She hasn’t come out yet,” Lena tried on a laugh. She sounded desperate. “Must be important work.” 

Somehow it felt like the conflict of yesterday, and the ripple effect hitting everyone as a result, was Angela’s fault. She knew it wasn’t, but the guilt was a stone in her belly that made her want to sink into her chair and not have to emerge. 

The blinds were shut tight over the windows in O’Deorain’s office. It didn’t even look inhabited, as if O’Deorain had everyone fooled and left before anyone arrived this morning to see her go. It would be prudent to go and knock and end this stalemate, Angela knew, because she was a professional, and so was O’Deorain. Her moods changed quicker than Genji’s wardrobe, but she wasn’t known to throw tantrums. Angela’s mind picked at itself, til she came to the conclusion that either O’Deorain really was working on something dreadfully important, or she really wasn’t inside. Angela didn’t want to knock, because she wasn’t particularly keen on learning which side of her mind was right. 

The email O’Deorain sent her last night still lingered, unopened and at the very top of her very extensive inbox when her laptop finished booting.

**odeorainm_1@watchpoint.co >> 21:42  
** **Subject: (empty) Angela, sorry to disturb you so l…**

“Since this morning, or--?”

Lena shrugged. Or twitched, nervously. “Yesterday.” 

The lack of a subject line piqued Angela’s interest, she’d admit that. O’Deorain never left them blank. Or, she never wrote Angela anything that inched towards that level of familiarity between them, because the level didn’t exist. This was different. Concerning, if Angela didn’t snip the tendrils of anxiety beginning their crawl down her throat, quickly.

She clicked, and her worries shrivelled. The email was brief, which thankfully wasn’t something else uncharacteristic Angela had to account for. She skimmed it. Looked up at O’Deorain’s office, again, but wore a frown this time.

Angela could tell from the way Lena was leaning against her chair and glancing over at her screen that she wanted in. Even if Angela indulged her, it wouldn’t make much sense without context. And Angela wasn’t privy to give context, she assumed by the state of things. 

So she covered herself with a smile and hoped that was enough to placate Lena. It seemed the floor had taken pity on her yesterday, and though Angela didn’t need it, it wouldn’t hurt to ride out the privilege of being left unprodded for as long as she could. Probably only half the day, if she were being honest, but it was nothing to feel guilty over. 

“Thanks for the yogurt,” Angela said, in lieu of whatever gossip Lena was fishing for. She stood and swiped the little tub from her desk, giving it a gentle shake. “I’ll pop it in the fridge, yeah?”

“It’s bircher,” Lena reminded her as she paced down the aisle, and Angela nodded back to her, as though she’d forgotten. 

No one looked up from their cubicles when Angela walked past them. And it wasn’t because they were focused on their work. Angela slowed, just slightly, when she passed O’Deorain’s office. She wondered just what had happened in the afternoon, to leave everyone cowering. 

For the first time in the three years that Angela had been working for Watchpoint, the break room was so clean that it shone. Angela suspected the place was more hygienic than the labs downstairs, what with how the sink glistened and she could practically see her reflection in the wooden coffee table, which was free from clutter and forgotten Tupperware. Everyone had washed their own coffee mug and stacked it to dry. The notice board had been cleared for the first time in three months, which was when Angela had had a rather public hissy-fit about all the unnecessarily sexual yoga fliers Genji kept tacking up.

Tentatively, Angela pried open the fridge, and had to blink the glare from her eyes at how white it all was. Even the light was working, and Angela couldn’t even remember if it ever actually did. 

She slid her yogurt into a neat little spot on the second shelf, alongside a bottle of juice that surprisingly was still in date, and an unopened jar of marmite that took the stead of the lucky one Lena bought with her from England when she was twenty-two. 

The fridge shut with a gentle kissing noise. Angela waited for the thing to disintegrate at her touch, but it didn’t. And when she glanced back around, everything was still neat and clean, and not just in her head. 

“It was about time for a fresh up,” Genji laughed, leant in the doorway and holding a boxed travel cup. “Amazing what you can do with a bit of spray.” 

“I thought we ran out last year.”

“Oh, yeah. We did.”

Angela snorted, and nodded out the window. “So, out with it then.” She settled down at the table and leant back, crossing her heeled ankles and smiling. 

Genji only shrugged. “I don’t know who cleaned, honestly. Hana was the first to get in. She said she thought she was in the wrong building.” 

“So would I, if you weren’t here.”

Genji shifted. He was a good actor, but Angela’s eyes narrowed. Something was on his mind, something other than the office fairy that had graced the place during the night. 

“What is it?” Angela laughed. Then she felt itchy, so she stood, and prodded the coffee machine with her back to the doorway to shield herself.

Genji cleared his throat, and she heard him sit down on the table. When she glanced over her shoulder back at him, he was inspecting his nails like they were the most attention-consuming thing in the entire world. “I don’t want to like, make things awkward,” he started, and Angela went back to watching the coffee percolate, “but I want you to know you can talk to me, about stuff.” 

“No one talks to you about stuff,” Angela laughed. “And for good reason.” Last Christmas, Angela had confided in Genji that she’d drawn Jesse in the office Secret Santa, and lamented that she hadn’t the foggiest idea what to get him. Unbeknownst to Angela, that was the exact point in time that Genji was entangled in some kind of blood feud with the man due to his relationship with Genji’s older brother, and the very nice and very expensive bottle of tequila Angela ended up buying for him ended up replaced with a bottle of piss. 

Angela didn’t know how Genji had managed that, and she didn’t exactly want to, even now. 

“I’m good at keeping secrets,” Genji continued, and Angela would have laughed again were it not for the strange look he offered her from the corner of his eye. “When I have to.”

Angela poured their coffees and slid a mug to Genji, before leaning against the chair next to his knees. Her interest was piqued, but only because of the mystery of her charged laptop and the cleanliness of the lunch room.

“Out with it, then,” she urged, when Genji only looked at her for a response. He shifted, and chewed his words, before he swallowed whatever nerves he had lodged in his throat. 

Genji said, “I think I saw you, last night.”

Angela smiled, but it was fake, tight-lipped, and keeping the panic from spilling out. “Oh?”

“At the Chateau Guillard.”

Oh.

Shit. 


	8. A Revelation

“Listen,” Genji laughed, and he reached across the table for Angela’s hands. He missed, and went sideways into Lena, who crumpled beneath him, a laughing mess, too. “It’s not like, seedy, you know? It’s cool. It’s super liberal.”

Angela’s tone was flatter than her vodka soda and her hair combined. “You talk politics with these people?”

“No, like, the service is made by queer people _for_ queer people, which is refreshing,” Emily tried. Of the lot of them, she was the most coherent, but even in the dim Angela could see her eyes crossing, and even over the thumping music she could hear her slur. “It’s really progressive.”

Angela wasn’t convinced. She wasn’t convinced by any of this, really, and wished she’d never agreed to come out. Barely eight pm on a Wednesday at King’s Road, of all places, and the three of them were sloshed, and their half-filled trivia sheet laid crumpled beneath a basket of fries and stained with globs of oil. Honestly, Angela thought, tossing a look over her shoulder at the wiry announcer, who was fighting with a HDMI cord for the projector. She’d hoped uni bars might have evolved in the last decade.

They hadn’t. But apparently the quality of hotline services had.

“Here, wait, I’ve got a card--” Genji pried apart his wallet like it held lost treasure. He fumbled with the card slots, before brandishing a sleek, black rectangle that he held aloft as though it were holy. “Call them. They only started up a few months ago.”  
  
“Why do you carry a card on you?” Lena piped. 

“I’m not calling a sexline,” Angela deadpanned, ignoring the card in her face and frowning. Genji lunged forward and dunked it in her lap, and while Emily and Lena both cheered, Angela sighed.

It was late. She was tired. They all had work in the morning, though it appeared all her friends had forgotten that minor detail.

“You don’t have to, if you don’t want.” Emily started. She was one Angela usually trusted most. Now, with something unintentionally patronising clinging to her voice, Angela drew back. “It’s probably a little… much for you, anyway.”

Angela narrowed her eyes, but in the low light it went missed. “What do you mean?”

“Ange, you’re the most vanilla person I’ve ever met,” Lena laughed, as though it explained something. Angela knew there was nothing cruel behind it, but her jaw still went tight and indignation flared in her chest.   
  
Feeling like she had something to prove, she downed her drink and kept her voice firm. “I don’t need to be vanilla to not want to call a sexline. I simply don’t have the--”

“--Time,” Lena finished dryly. She slid the attempted trivia sheet across the table to Genji while the emcee read his card. Genji scratched his chin, then jotted something down on a brainwave. Then he immediately scribbled it out.

“Moira’s been staying back longer and longer at the office. Which means she’s staying up later. Which _means_ in her tiredness, she gets sloppy. She just loves making problems.”   
  
And you love fixing them, Angela thought to herself, holding Lena's endless stare.

“Probably for the best, anyway,” Lena continued, before the frustration simmering under Angela’s skin could burst into a flare and she would get dragged into the same old argument. Imbued with the persuasive powers of alcohol, Angela knew it wouldn’t take her long to get there. “Talon mostly does, like, fetish stuff.”

How little anyone actually knew about her. Angela had to remind herself that that was how she preferred it, and as she covered her irritability with a shrug, she kept her tongue bitten back, and shimmied up off the seat. “Well, thank you for the invite,” she said, trying to sound diplomatic. “It’s pretty late.”

“Call them,” Genji said loudly to her back as she shunted towards the front of the pub.

“Or don’t, you know, you do you!” Emily tacked on, and Angela liked her, but there was something hanging in her tone, as though Angela was an innocent who would never embroil herself in anything other than missionary with her clothes on and the lights off. Emily spoke as though she never expected Angela to call.

It took Angela til she had stomped the entire twenty-minute long walk home, wound up out the front of her locked door, and reached into her bag to dig for her keys to realise the sleek, black card had been in her fist the entire time.

“Emily’s the bloody vanilla one,” Angela told it, “Lena tells me everything.”

Her hand did nothing. It remained clenched around the little piece of cardboard. Her knuckles began to turn white.

The frustration burnt. Angela shoved the card deep into her handbag and replaced it with her keys. It took her a few fumbles but eventually the key slid in deep. She kicked off her heels in the hallway once she’d stumbled across the threshold, and didn’t bother to drop them on her shoe rack.

The house was dark, and cold, but it was hers. She didn’t need anything else. She didn’t need any _one_ else. “I certainly don’t need Genji’s advice,” Angela muttered to herself. Her shower was just long enough to wash the stale smell of beer and chips out of her pores, and when she fell into it, her bed was just empty enough to stretch her arm out on.

~

“I think you must have me mistaken,” Angela tried, but she knew from the way Genji was looking at her that she had already lost this battle before her coworker had even established his reinforcements.

She spoke quietly. They both did. The door to the lunchroom was still swung wide and the floor was full of open ears. Even though he was the one to bring it up, it seemed as though Genji didn’t even want to have the conversation at all. He looked a strange mix of smug and uncomfortable. “I just missed you. You were about to walk out of the club.”

The tiny voice in Angela’s mind scrambled to find a suitable explanation, a route out of this. It came up with nothing. Part of Angela sighed with resignation, and knew that it was over. She waved her hand. Go on, she said.

Genji looked at her when he admitted, beneath his breath, “When I saw you leave, I was coming from _upstairs_.”

Oh.

Angela’s eyebrows shot halfway up her forehead. This was interesting.

Genji’s face pinched and a mottled red bloomed against his throat. He fiddled with the travel mug in his hands and shifted, and Angela realised that this was first time she’d ever seen him embarrassed.

“I’m not doing like, heavy stuff. I mean, maybe you are, and that’s fine. That’s cool. One of the--” Angela didn’t think it was possible for his face to go any redder, but it did, and if her brain wasn’t stalling on every thought she tried to string together, she’d be impressed. “There’s a guy who does guided meditation and, like, tantric stuff. He’s really good at like, tapping into subspace.” Genji rubbed his temple, and Angela blinked stupidly.

“Sorry, I don’t--” Angela pursed her lips. “I don’t mean to be blunt, but why are you telling me this?”

“Because nobody knows, and I thought it would be good to open up about it.” Genji finally sighed, smiled, and slid the keepcup across the table to her. “And I feel like you’ve got some stuff on your mind, too.”

She did. God, she did. Her call with Sir. Her fight with O’Deorain. The entire ordeal at Overwatch. The fact that O’Deorain hadn’t spoken with her since yesterday, and that the silence left her frayed and squirming. She wanted someone to know how much she hated it. She wanted to count just how many times a day she got stuck wondering just what Sir was doing in her real life, outside of their bubble. Were calls her only work? Who were her friends? Sir’s words from last night still pounded inside her like a bird in a cage, trying to get out. _I always hope it’s you._ Angela had no fucking clue what to do with that information, and she needed someone else to know.

God, it would be good to talk to somebody, especially Genji.

“I wouldn’t be… opposed,” Angela admitted, quietly. She played with the the keepcup so that she wasn’t standing still, and chewed her words. “I don’t really know how to...”

“That’s fine,” Genji said, happily, and Angela felt relieved she didn’t have to elaborate. He smiled up at her, and the light from outside managed to reflect off of O’Deorain’s opened office door and bounce into the room. It cut across his face just perfectly. Angela had never realised just how pretty he was. “I just wanted to let you know, like, me too, is all.”

“Yeah.” The side of Angela’s mouth tugged upwards. “Me, too.”

Genji finished his coffee quickly, then he stood and nodded to the cup in her hands. “So you can save some turtles.”

“You remembered.”

“I remember everything.”

It was nice, to have someone on her side. And Genji always was. He was probably her closest friend, if she’d allow anyone to be, and as she watched him from the corner of her eye she felt her resolve melting. All the words trapped in her throat were climbing higher and higher, and stuck themselves to the insides of her teeth. They danced on her lips. They tried to come out. She wanted to say, I called. I called and I liked it and now things are all tangled too hard to unknot. So Angela took a breath and shifted, and thought, well, they were already on the subject.

"Actually, I took your advice.”

Genji rolled his eyes. He smiled and leant back against the chair. “Okay, finally.”

There was a gossipy note clinging to his tone that infected Angela with a twisted flutter of excitement, as though she knew something juicy and scandalous. She supposed she did; just about herself. Her secret was detrimental to her social standing in her career, to her name, to her company. But Ana Amari could slash through all of that quite easily after O’Deorian did her damage, if she wanted to, anyway. So what did it matter.

Angela glanced out the window. The doorway was clear. She leant forward.

“I called.”

“Called who?” Genji asked, frowning.

It felt surreal to say it aloud. And once she did, everything became real.  “Talon. Last week.”

Genji’s mouth fell open. And then it moved, and split into the wildest grin Angela had ever seen.

“Stop, no,” she tried, laughing, ducking her head. “Don’t over excite yourself.”

“ _Angela_.”

She laughed, really laughed, and her ribs felt hollow. Light as a bird. “I’ve called three times now.”

“ _Oh my God,_ ” Genji grabbed for her. It was like they were in high school. “How did I miss this?”

Angela shrugged, but Genji’s hands didn’t move from her arm, and she didn’t want them to. “I’ve just been busy. Nothing unusual.”

“And? Who do you have?”

Talon still must be pretty underground, for Genji to know the workers by name. And then Angela realised that it probably wasn’t a coincidence that Sir had friends at Chateau Guillard, and Genji had his plethora of connections all over the damn city.

“I don’t know her real name. I don’t even know if she has a pseudonym, or anything,” Angela admitted. “But I like her. A lot.”

Genji’s eyes went wide. He shook his head, and in turn rattled her arm. “Oh, no. No. You need to like, set up boundaries.” His brow furrowed, but even when he added, desperately, “This’ll get messy, otherwise,” Angela wasn’t worried. She just leant into him.

“I know. I’m a big girl.”

“But seriously,” he tried again, frowning, “who do you have?”

Angela mulled it over. It shouldn’t be hard to say, because it was etched into her memory. It was always in her mouth, on her tongue. The Irish woman in Dominance and submission. But Angela stalled. She didn’t really know why.

But she was glad she had, when there was a light rapping of knuckles against the door. O’Deorian didn’t wait to be welcomed in.

“I hope I’m not interrupting,” she flatlined, in a way that leant Angela an inclination to believe it didn’t matter if she was, “I was wondering if I could have a word, Angela.”

Angela didn’t know if it was because she hadn’t seen her in a day, but O’Deorain looked like she’d been steamrolled, then hit by a bus, then given a burnt coffee, and finally thrown off a cliff. Her shirt was unbuttoned worryingly low, and untucked from her trousers, which were creased and crinkled. She looked thinner than usual, waif-like and fragile. She was in the same outfit as yesterday. But it was the way her mismatched eyes were heavily etched with tiredness that had Angela’s stomach twisting. Her glasses were pushed up into her tousled hair leaving nothing to obscure the dark shadows clinging to the sharp lines of her face. She stared down Angela for so long that she forgot to reply entirely, til the chair Genji was still leaning against creaked, and O’Deorain visibly swallowed.

“Of course, sir. Sorry, I--” What was she apologising for? Angela wished she could glue her mouth shut.   
  
O’Deorain didn’t seem fazed; she merely nodded. But before she turned and walked out, before Angela could miss it, her face darkened into something like sadness, and though Angela knew she wasn’t supposed to, like with all O'Deorain's other errant looks and stolen glances, she caught it anyway.

O’Deorain didn’t wait to see if she would follow, and Angela didn’t even bother looking back at Genji before she tripped out of the lunchroom after their boss. She still felt as light and empty as she had when she told Genji about her calls, but she wasn’t drunk on it anymore. Now she felt despondent. She felt desperate to be filled, to be grounded.

Shielded by their cubicles, everyone watched them cut across the floor. Angela ignored them, as though Lena, Hana, Lucio, all of them, never even existed in the first place. She forgot about everything, as though her vision had tunnelled and all she saw was O’Deorain.

Angela was let in first, and when she walked past O’Deorain she felt her breath against the top of her scalp. Such an endearing, intimate little thing. Her throat cinched in frustration at how badly she enjoyed it, how desperate she was to be closer. A day had passed, and being without O’Deorain for that time felt like being flayed. She felt like a blackhole was opening up in her chest, like she was about to be ripped apart.

“Did you read my email?” O’Deorain asked. Her throat sounded dry, used. When Angela went to sit opposite her desk, O’Deorian made a noise, and nodded to the settee. When Angela settled down on it, she folded her hands one atop the other, and pressed her knees together.

“I did.”

“I couldn’t say much,” O’Deorain continued, circling her desk and bending forwards to rifle through papers. Angela’s eyes traced the long, strong makings of her legs, and then up to her narrow waist. A stupid little fantasy of O’Deorain dressed not unlike how she already was and kneeling over her as she kept her tied infiltrated Angela’s head. When O’Deorain came back round, Angela managed to shoo it. “I still can’t, really.”

“Confidential?”

“More like illegal." She shook her head as she scanned the papers. “So, this is all highly confidential. In fact, I don’t-- I shouldn’t even tell you, because now you’re liable--”

“Sir,” Angela said lightly, and O’Deorain’s world stopped on her tongue. “It’s okay. You can trust me, too.”  
  
O’Deorain looked at her with unfiltered and unshackled longing. Angela chalked it up to how exhausted, how stressed, how fractured she’d been these past few days, what with the drama with the sale. And here Angela was, too ready to remedy that, too embroiled in it herself to keep a featherlight grip on control. This was what Angela did, she wanted to say, to remind her. Lay it on me, Angela thought, because she could take it.

 **odeorain_m1@watchpoint.co >> 21:46  
**  **Subject: (empty)**  
   
_Angela, sorry to disturb you so late._  
_I wanted to apologise for my behaviour today._  
_I hope you will trust me._  
  
_Moira_  


O’Deorain must have been tired, because instead of pacing, or standing by her desk, as she might normally do, she came to sit by Angela, so close that their legs almost brushed. She rested the papers against her knee, and Angela felt small. Something was going off in her brain, instinctual and insistent. There was nothing stopping her from sliding down onto the floor in front of O’Deorain. The stupid voice in her mind didn’t say no, this time. It didn’t say no.

She’d slide down onto her stockinged knees.   
  
She’d cross her heels, keep her hands hooked behind her back.   
  
Angela wondered what the leather of O’Deorain’s boot might taste like.

“When we were at Overwatch, in the labs, I saw something that didn’t sit right with me,” O’Deorain began, voice so quiet she could have been whispering. The blinds on her door and windows were still shut. Angela realised that was intentional. And she realised she was breathing heavy. “Ana was showing us their tech. She was talking to you. I was watching.”

“I remember,” Angela mumbled. It was clear O’Deorain hadn’t showered, but she didn’t smell bad. Her hands were in white fists on her knees, and her right foot tapped the floor incessantly. Angela reached out for the papers, and when her hand rested briefly atop O’Deorain’s knee for a scintilla of a second as she took them, she felt the tension evaporate from O’Deorain’s posture, as though Angela had cut all her cords and snapped her strings.  
  
This’ll get messy, is what Genji had told her. Not even five minutes ago.   
  
The woman had no right to look so attractive when she was exhausted. Angela had to glance away from O’Deorain’s stupidly handsome face and she squinted at the paper, instead. It took her an embarrassingly long time to realise it was still encoded, and at the back of the pile lay what O’Deorain wanted her to see.

“I don’t want you to think I’m… bad,” O’Deorain tried, while she read. “Of all the people I know, Angela, I don’t want you to think ill of me.”

“I don’t,” Angela told her. She would laugh at how uncharacteristically anxious O’Deorain was being, but something about this wasn’t funny, and it wasn’t a joke. “I may be just as stubborn as you, but I know that you do things for a reason. I always figure that out, eventually.”

O’Deorain looked at her. “Thank you, for that.” Then she nodded to the papers. “In the labs, I thought I saw something that didn’t belong. Initially I brushed it away, because--” a huff escaped her throat, something like a scoff, or an incredulous laugh, or both, really -- “because it’s Overwatch Medical. They’re the saviour to millions.”

Angela frowned. The files were of blueprints, of specs, and test outcomes. Emails, dated for a month ago. Just before the breakthrough. “What did you see, sir?”

“What did _you_ see, Angela?”   
  
“Shields, prosthetics -- just equipment, for the field.”   
  
O’Deorain was so close when she spoke that Angela felt her breath on her lips. “I saw a rifle.”

Perched on a stand.

It was being worked upon, under heavy lights and a careful eye.

Two sets, it seemed.

“I didn’t think anything of it,” O’Deorain continued, and Angela’s tongue felt too heavy, her stomach felt light. “Amari was quick to distract you from it. She’d tried to distract the both of us.”

The more Angela read, the more things unravelled. The words _biotic_ and _nanotech_ started to blur into one meaning, one meaning in Angela’s mind.

“Will it be used to heal people?”

O’Deorain laughed, empty. “What kind of rifle is used to heal people?”

Weeks of correspondence hid in the printed emails, and the blueprints went on and on. The science of it, of the nanites Watchpoint Futuristics had discovered and patented, went on and on and on. The stack of papers weighed down Angela’s hands til she couldn’t hold them any longer, and her eyes hurt from the reading.

“I don’t understand.”

“Amari had her own ideas on how to use the nanotech. Overwatch may help the masses, but they’re still military.”

Angela licked her lips. When she looked up at O’Deorain she was being watched, her reaction gauged. Angela gave everything away. “Is this what you’ve been doing, since we got back?”

“I had to discredit her, as fast as I could. It wasn’t an easy dig, though.”

Angela shook the papers. “You did this?”

“No,” O’Deorain was quick to rectify, “my friend did. She’s rather adept at this kind of thing.”

A friend. Angela didn’t think they shared the same camaraderie that she and Genji had. “This is illegal, sir. If the cybersecurity of Overwatch can be infiltrated, then they’ll want to know which organisation--”

O’Deorain didn’t look at her. She stared down at her hands, how they were tangled together, the knuckles white. Angela looked, too. She saw the way her bones creaked and shook. “You wanted grounds. That’s why I had it done.”

It felt like a blow, but the usual savagery wasn’t there. O’Deorain sounded tired, plain and unscathing. And then, like the gentle way water creeps ashore, realisation crawled out of Angela’s heart and sent her warm.

“You did this for me.”

Oh.

Oh, _oh._

O’Deorain kept her eyes shut like it kept Angela at bay. She was hunched forward on her knees and Angela’s hand found its way to her shoulder. She could feel the ridge of O’Deorain’s collarbone when she curled her fingers against her shirt.

“I did it because I don’t want you to think I’m cruel.” Angela had never seen her like this. Not even when they were alone on the roof. Not exhausted in the car ride home from Overwatch Medical. She was sore and open like a gash. Angela’s palm smoothed down her back, and it came naturally. “It’s never my intention. But it’s just the way I am.”

“I like the way you are.”

O’Deorain chuckled. She looked up to the shielded windows of her office, as though she were glancing out at her staff on the floor, and then looked back down at her boots. “Small mercies, I suppose.”

Angela watched her. She didn’t move her hand, wasn’t prompted to. O’Deorain felt comfortable beneath her and Angela felt like all she needed to do was ask. Ask, and she’d shape herself for her.

O’Deorain waited. When she shot her eyes at Angela they were sad. “You really don’t know, do you?”

“Know what, sir?”

She untangled her hands, and then O’Deorain reached up to curl a tress of Angela’s hair back out of the way. Her fingers brushed the shell of her ear, her jaw, to her throat. The incessant voice hiding in the back of Angela’s mind was quelled, as, like Angela, it held its breath. They had never been closer. Angela wanted more.

But then O’Deorain stood, abrupt as always, and frustration was a blooming wound right between Angela’s ribs. She took the files with her on her short walk to her desk, and stowed them in a drawer. O’Deorain sat back against the desk and tried to rub the sleep from her eyes.

The moment was over. Angela had to let it go. Like always. “What do we do now, then?”

O’Deorain was honest. “I don’t know. I haven’t even made contact with Amari yet.”

“That can be another day’s mission. As is figuring out what to do in the wake of this…”

O’Deorain grunted. “I know how the world works. I am well aware that it could be any company, world renowned or not, that takes a good thing and manipulates it to cause damage. To cause pain. That’s just the way of it.”

Normally, at this point, Angela would keep her gaze lowered and her hands still. She’d play to O’Deorain, avoid her weak spots. But now Angela pressed into them, like a tongue on a sore tooth. She stood, and her heels clipping on the floor was the only sound beneath O’Deorain’s soft breathing. Angela reached for her glasses and folded them on the desk. While her hands were there she reached up, and she smoothed O’Deorain’s hair back and down, raked her fingers through the tresses and scratched the flat ends of her bitten nails against her scalp. Two points watched her, ruddy brown and icy blue, before fluttering shut. Angela’s hands moved down, and she fixed O’Deorain’s collar, buttoning it tight to her throat the way she liked.

They stood so close that O’Deorain’s knees bracketed Angela’s thighs. “You did a good job. A brilliant job,” Angela murmured, “and I should have trusted you better. I promise I will, in the future.”

“I’m sorry for what I said, in the car.”

“I forgive you. Just let me in next time you have a hunch. You know how I always assume the worst.” Angela smiled up at her, and smoothed the buttons on the front of her shirt. When her fingers brushed O’Deorain’s belt, still snaked tight around her waist, she left them there, hooked over the buckle. “No more secrets.”

O’Deorain looked at her like she wasn’t real. Angela took that as a good thing, and decided she’d done her job, and stepped back. “Now, let me drive you home. You need a shower.”

~

And Friday came, and it was easy. Angela breathed without stones in her lungs, when she woke it wasn’t with dread. There was a freedom in getting dressed, and something humble and quaint about making her own breakfast in her own kitchen for once, rather than picking it up on the way to work, or skipping it entirely. As she waited for the kettle to boil an email pinged through, from O’Deorain. Angela smiled at it, and slid it open, and when she read it she didn’t stomp down the flutter in her chest, like she always did.   
  
**odeorain_m1@watchpoint.co >> 06:32**  
  
I _won’t be in the office today til late. I’ve scheduled another meeting with Ana Amari, but I won’t steal you away from work again for it. I endeavour to broach the topic of her “biotic rifle.”  Whether or not I get a straight answer is another question I probably can’t control. Not that I control much, to begin with.  
  
__If I don’t see you beforehand, have a good weekend. Perhaps everyone might be celebrating a sale when they go on their bender.  
_  
_Thank you for everything, Angela. Relax today._  
  
_Moira._

There was something soft to her letter. Gentle and kind and melting a cystalised part of Angela, like her heart were made of honey and it was held to a flame. Warmth was sluicing over the rungs of her ribs and it made Angela full. If Angela shut her eyes she could entertain the idea of O’Deorain so easily, right there, by her kitchen island, saying it all in person. Bent at the waist forwards, so she could reach a coffee. Her hair would be freshly slicked back, her pomade wouldn’t have lost its scent yet. She’d still smell like soap from her shower, and Angela wondered what type she used. O’Deorain always spoke softly, which always made her her sound severe. But this would be different. This would be reserved for those O’Deorain favoured. And O’Deorain held such a tender spot in her chest for her.   
  
At work, everything seemed normal. No one was on edge. No body kept their eyes shielded and their whispers beneath their breaths. O’Deorain’s blinds had been pulled open and her door was wide open, but the office was empty and immaculate. When Angela walked past it she even saw the throw blanket O’Deorain always thought was well camouflaged folded over the back of the settee, untouched and unslept in. Angela slipped inside, and clipped O’Deorain’s laptop into its charger, let her fingers brush against the back of her leather desk chair. She let herself be there for a moment. Something seeped beneath her skin and made her bones warm. Angela slipped outside before anyone could catch her.   
  
“You all ready for tomorrow?” Lena prodded, the moment she stepped into the aisle. She said it as though she expected Angela to have forgotten. Angela cocked her head, played dumb.   
  
“That depends,” she started, “have you got my outfit all picked out for me?”   
  
“ _Depends_ ,” Lena drawled, smile buttery, “you dressing like it’s the last time you’ll get sex in your life?”

Genji scoffed, sliding out of his cubicle and entering the fray. He was filing his nails. “Ange always dresses like she’s getting sex.”

“Yeah, okay, but I’m talking about--” Lena went to make an obscene gesture with her fingers, and instead of getting embarrassed, or annoyed, and falling into her cubicle to bury her head in the sand, Angela just rolled her eyes and waved her off.

“There _is_ an appeal to the office-girl type.” Angela looked down at herself. Lena wasn’t convinced.

“Yeah, if you’re Moira.” Lena’s rolling eyes slid over to Genji for support, who only raised his eyebrows and nodded at the way Angela’s blush was raging.

Lena’s smile dropped instantly. “What. No. No, I don’t like, whatever that is. On your face.”

“What time are you meeting me tomorrow?” Angela asked, lightly, and folded her legs neatly when she settled down at her desk. Her face was still burning. But she was still smiling, despite it.

“Why are you _smirking_? What haven’t you told me?”

She didn’t get her answer. “I hope you’ve picked out something impressive for me, Lena.”

Angela couldn’t help the laugh that bubbled up from her as she watched Lena desperately slide across the lino to shake Genji at his side. “ _Who_ does she have to impress?”

Genji swatted at her like she was a bug he wasn’t particularly fond of. “How should I know. She keeps her secrets locked down.”

The office on the opposite side of the room caught her eye again. She blinked, and Angela could imagine O’Deorain, here with her instead of facing Amari. She’d be sat at her desk, like Angela was sat at her own. How many long days had they spent just like this, trading glances and pretending they weren’t. How many times had O’Deorain done something for her that she hadn’t had to play coy for. Had she missed every one? The office went empty again, when Angela blinked the fantasy of her away. But the feeling swelling in her chest stayed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> <333


End file.
